


Moth to the flames

by FaiaHae



Series: Memoria [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast), The Adventure Zone: Amnesty (Podcast)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Flashbacks, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Memory, Ned and boyd are married, Sharing a Bed, The Moth Man's heater broke, The fake dating au where Duck discovers that rightous indignation is the best way to lie, alternate to the current arc, buckle up kids I figured out the plot (and you're going to have to wait like 15 chapters for it), but It'll turn out okay because I'm a SAP, can't get a divorce when one you is using a fake name and one is in jail, fluff to angst to angst with a happy ending, implied gaslighting and emotional abuse, maybe some angst later, offscreen murder, referenced transphobia, that will be important later, there will be a bit of non-linear narrative but in a linear way, vague allusions to homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2019-10-26 13:06:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 33
Words: 26,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17746454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaiaHae/pseuds/FaiaHae
Summary: It all started, as most major disasters did when Duck was involved, with one little lie.And then things started to get complicated.*~*(On hiatus for a bit! will likely still be posting updates but not regularly, i'm sorry, exam weeks!!)*~*





	1. Immediate Consequences

It all started, as most major disasters did when Duck was involved, with one little lie.

 

Indrid’s heating was out, which was Not Good, and he wasn’t saying much on the drive to the lodge, which was worse. Duck was trying to figure out if this was some future thing or if he needed to be worried about Indrid passing out on the drive, when he felt the touch at his elbow- light, but he was so deep in his thoughts that it startled him anyway.

 

He swore as his hands tightened on the steering wheel, keeping the car steady, and glanced over to Indrid.

 

The mothman’s glasses reflected bright in the glare of the streetlights, nothing else visible in his expression. Except, after a moment, he smiled. His teeth were bright in the dark.

 

“I just want you to know that I know what you’re going to say, and it’s alright with me. Say as much as you need to. I support it. If you second guess the lie, it will fall apart.”

 

“...what?”

 

Indrid gestured up the driveway to the lodge as Duck began to slow.

 

Fuck.

 

Agent Stern was on the porch, smoking a cigarette and leaning on the bannister. He looked for all the world like he was completely relaxed, but his eyes were tracking the car as Duck parked.

 

Duck’s chest began to tighten, but the pressure loosened before it could build to the point of being unbearable as Indrid squeezed his arm. Right. He had this. Whatever Duck said, as long as he committed, it was going to work.

 

He took a deep steadying breath, and got out of the car- going around to let Indrid out. To his surprise, Indrid caught his hand as he stepped out of the car, pulling him along to the stairs. Duck was a little distracted by that, the cold of Indrid’s fingers, so he missed the question.

 

“-this?”

 

“Huh?” Duck blinked up at Stern, stopping as Indrid tucked himself into his side. His heart was pounding in his ears. He nearly missed the question again. 

 

“Who is your guest?”

 

Despite Indrid’s confidence in him, Duck floundered.

 

“He’s the...he’s the...He’s my....m-”  _ don’t say moth don’t say moth don’t say-  _ “.....man.”

Agent Stern raised an eyebrow.

  
“He’s your man?”

 

Oh, shit.

 

But Indrid’s hand was steady on his arm, and  _ oh. That was why he’d hung so close as they came up the stairs. _

 

Duck was...almost disappointed. He didn’t want to analyze that feeling too quickly. But Stern was giving him one of those FBI looks, and panic rose in Duck’s chest again, followed by some sick amalgamation of protectiveness and anger.

 

“Do you have a problem, Agent Stern?”

 

Stern looked taken aback.

  
“I- no, it’s just that I hadn’t seen him here before, and I thought you-”

 

Duck knew that the end of that sentence was probably totally inane, but it clenched something up in his chest.   
  
“You thought I was what, Agent? You think just because you’re FBI you got the world’s most advanced gaydar?”

 

“....No. I was going to say that I didn’t think you’d have time for a relationship, given the hours you keep out in the forest and in the lodge.” Stern sounded ashamed, but still suspicious, and Duck felt his temper rising again.

 

“Well I’ll have you know that I always make time to call Indrid and I-”

 

“Dear.”

 

Duck’s voice broke in his throat, and he choked down the words as Indrid patted his chest. Shit. For a minute there he’d almost convinced himself. Well, he did call Indrid every day, even when he was on the graveyard shift, but that was just good planning, and maybe they didn’t usually talk about the visions but-

 

“I know it was a rough night, but there’s no need to take it out on this poor man. Agent Stern, I’m Indrid.”

 

Indrid held out a hand, still keeping one arm tight around Duck’s shoulders. 

 

“Some hooligans messed with the power coming to my trailer and I’m quite anemic, so you’ll have to forgive Duck his protectiveness.”

There was still a little glint in Stern’s eye that Duck didn’t like the look of, but he took Indrid’s hand.

 

He winced as Indrid dropped the temperature of his fingers by 10 degrees.

 

“My, you’d better get inside. Those hooligans don’t know the damage they do in weather like this.”

 

Indrid nodded, but Duck’s relief only lasted until Stern came in after them. Shit. Everyone was in the lobby someone was going to-.

 

Indrid was relaxed at his side, and he took a deep breath, trying to believe that for once everything was under control. He saw Ned’s head pop up from behind the couch.

 

“Oh, hey Indrid! Duck finally bringing you home to meet the in-laws?”

 

Duck nearly choked on his own tongue, but Indrid just tucked himself closer to Duck’s side.

 

“Are you referring to yourself, Ned? I’m almost certain we’re all about the same age.”

 

Ned took about 10 seconds of looking at Duck’s expression (and noting his lack of rebuttal), Indrid’s arm, and Agent Stern, and it clicked. He grinned, and Duck had never felt so simultaneously grateful and ready to die from embarrassment in his life. 

 

“Nah. I meant Mama, really. But I consider myself something of a father figure-”

 

“Not to me, you’re not.” The words were out before Duck could overthink them, and it felt....natural. Like he wasn’t lying at all. Indrid was by his side and he and Ned were just shooting the shit, like always.

 

He just might be able to pull this off.


	2. Fair Game

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just for future reference, I'm going to be updating Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. But I did post the fic on a Monday...so I'm gonna go ahead and update a day early.

Normally, Duck was pretty hard to make fun of. He was inscrutable, hard to ruffle, and the things that got him upset tended to be things that Ned would  _ never _ make fun of him for.

  
Like the loss of his powers.

 

Duck hadn’t even told him about that, but Ned prided himself a bit on being observant. Duck had stopped excusing himself from events around the same time every night, Duck had stopped running and was skateboarding everywhere.

 

Oh, and he’d had a goddamn  _ meltdown _ when they were picking up weapons in Sylvain. He’d clung to that helmet like a lifeline, like it was his last hope for a future he could be proud of.

 

So Ned wasn’t going to touch on that. He may be, by his own admission, kind of an asshole- but he and Duck were friends. There were lines you didn’t cross.

 

This thing with Indrid though.

 

That was fair game.

 

He settled back into the couch, grinning at them as they settled in the couch, Indrid halfway in Duck’s lap. He wondered who’s idea this one was. Had to be the mothman, Duck couldn’t lie for shit. That was interesting, though. That had potential.

  
Couldn’t ask outright, Stern was hovering somewhere over his shoulder, but Ned really couldn’t help himself.

 

“I still think he’s too good for you, Duck. If my hus- uh, if a boyfriend of mine punched me in the face that’d be the end of it.”

 

He winced. He could hear Agent Stern writing in his notebook again, and then stopping abruptly. Woops.

 

“I had a bug on my face.” Indrid quipped, his tone mild. “That hardly counts.”

 

Duck looked considerably more agitated (shit, he’d probably seen Stern write that down). Indrid tipped his head in a way that Ned had an instinctive nervous reaction to (it meant he’d found a particularly interesting timeline).

  
“I don’t really think you have a right to comment, you put your husband in j-”

  
“ _ Alright _ fair shake,  _ shut up now. _ ”

 

“Don’t dish it if you can’t take it,  _ Ned. _ ”

 

Duck actually smirked and damn it, why’d he have to pick now to grow a spine. He didn’t even know about Boyd (unless Indrid had told him. Shit, had Indrid narced? Fuck.)

 

“Don’t say my name like that,  _ Duck. _ ”

 

“It’s a nickname.” Duck mumbled, crossing his arms and looking away in time to miss the tiny smile pushing its way up at the corners of Indrid’s mouth.

Huh.

 

Ned filed that one away for future reference- he guessed there was a timeline where he blurted it out immediately, because Indrid shot him a look that was downright frosty. Ned couldn’t help his grin, but tried for an apologetic shrug.

 

Whatever Indrid saw of that seemed to satisfy him, because he went back to focusing his full attention on Duck.

 

“Should I go check in?”

 

“Wha- oh, no, Hon, let me do it.” He got up in a rush- enough of one that Ned suspected he’d been waiting for a signal, and rushed off to the check-in desk.

 

Great.

 

So that left him with Indrid, but unfortunately, Stern was still lurking, so it wasn’t grill-time yet, and Indrid was giving him a look that spelled out pretty frankly what he thought of Ned’s current plans.

 

Alright. Plan.....E, then.

 

Indrid’s expression only relaxed a bit, but Ned would take it.

 

“So Indrid. Is Duck taking you anywhere nice to celebrate breaking the news?”

 

“I hardly think now is the time, Ned.”

 

“Aw, you know he’s been bummed out lately. He could use some....some uh...”

 

“Emotional support?” prompted Stern, who plopped himself down on the couch next to Ned.

 

“Yeah, emotional support!” Ned...took a minute to register who was talking and glared at him, forgetting for a moment that he was supposed to be pretending to cooperate.

 

“Sorry, but I couldn’t help but overhear, and I thought it would be ruder to quietly eavesdrop then to join the conversation.”

 

Ned blinked. He really couldn’t argue with that one, and Stern looked downright apologetic.

 

“What has Duck been upset about?”

 

That was definitely Stern’s investigator voice, damn him. Ned weighed options, trying to think of what to say, as Indrid tipped his head again, reading the future. Shit, how should he say it? He couldn’t tell him the truth. Should he say an old friend had died? Stopped contacting him? Stopped-

 

“-writing to him. He’s not sure why or what happened to her, but they’ve been talking since he was a kid, and he’s quite worried.”

 

It took Ned too long to realize that Indrid had literally stolen the words he was going to say and was already speaking. Ned wasn’t sure if he was relieved or annoyed, but it was pretty good cover, and Stern’s expression said that something about it had struck him.

 

“I suppose it must be common with penpals. People just don’t stick around.” His tone was....not normal. Ned was a little worried by that tone coming from a man who probably knew 50 ways to kill them all, but thankfully, Duck chose that moment to return from the desk and settle back in next to Indrid.

  
“What’d I miss?”

 

Indrid grinned, his glasses reflecting the light.

  
“Well I was just about to tell Agent Stern about that time you rescued me from the runaway goat at that farm we visited-”


	3. The Possible Future

Duck really should have known it wasn’t going to be that easy.

 

Everything was fine- he was tucked into Indrid’s side like it was the place in the world he most wanted to be (and maybe it was, though he wasn’t ready to have that conversation with himself just yet) and then...well. And then he looked at the clock.

 

“Aw shit, I got work early tomorrow.”

 

The minute the words left his mouth, Indrid went still at his side. Duck opened his mouth, unthinking, about to express his concern; and Indrid’s hand tightened almost to the point of pain around his.

 

He shut his mouth again.

 

Indrid gave him an easy smile, and if it hadn’t been for the probable blood loss in his fingers, Duck would have believed that look completely.

 

“Do you think you could ask Leo to look after your cat tonight? I know you were going to go home but I-” his face clouded, and Duck found himself second-guessing how much of the agony in the set of his lips was faked, “ -I’m sorry. You know I’m not really comfortable sleeping anywhere but my own bed and now we don’t have much choice.”

 

“-Of course.” Duck had intended to sound casual- but he knew from the startled look on Ned’s face that his intonation hadn’t been quite right. He hurried over to the payphone before he could fuck this up any worse, just barely hearing Stern asking Indrid why they didn’t just go to Duck’s apartment. Indrid replied, in that casual way of his, that Duck’s room never got warm enough in the winter. The windows weren’t sealed right.

 

That made Duck’s hand hesitate on the receiver. That was true. But how did Indrid...? Duck shook it off, figuring it must be a future thing.

 

...would they be ending up in his room soon?

 

The phone beeped in his ear, and Duck swore and finally stuck the coins in, telling Leo he wasn’t going to make it home and leaving it at that. He extracted the promise to make sure Minnie was fed and had water (and make sure the windows are sealed, Leo? Please? I don’t need her running off tonight).

 

Something must have shown in his face- or his internal thoughts weren’t so internal in some other possible future- because Indrid took his hand immediately as he returned to the couch.

 

“Leo will take good care of Minnie.”

 

Duck nodded, straining the corner of his eye to see if Stern had thought that suspicious- but Stern was only half paying attention to them, looking sleepily into his cup of tea. Huh. Maybe that was just....one of those things couples were supposed to know about each other. When they were worried, what they were worried about.

 

Duck wished he knew what Indrid was so worried about.

 

He squeezed the hand in his, and resolved to find out.

“Did you wanna turn in, or should I go ahead?”

 

Duck was expecting Indrid to take a moment to think about it, balance all the potential futures as he usually did. But Indrid was off the couch almost before he could finish his sentence, threading their hands together and tugging him down the hall.

 

“Goodnight, Ned- Agent- Barclay.”

  
Duck had hardly seen Barclay- he’d been standing in the doorway to the kitchen and as Indrid tugged him by, he saw that the man looked....vaguely guilty.

 

Huh.

 

He marked that up as a mystery for another time and followed Indrid down the hall.


	4. Misfortune

Agent Stern had a love-hate relationship with his profession. He was protecting people, coming between them and threats they had no way to comprehend, let alone protect themselves from. 

 

On the other hand...

 

He sighed. He hadn’t been a police officer because he didn’t want to treat people like monsters- he wanted to hunt the things that needed to be hunted. Black, white. Establish a target, pull the trigger. But Kepler was an outlier. Most of the towns he went to with supernatural sightings had people scared, people who told him absolutely everything they could because they didn’t want to die. 

 

Kepler wasn’t scared.

 

So despite himself, he was starting to treat Kepler like it was full of suspects- monsters instead of people. It bothered him. It wasn’t how he liked to do his job, and he was trying to reign it in.

 

But it would help if everyone would stop acting  _ so damn guilty. _

 

He massaged his forehead, trying to maintain a neutral expression as Ned continued to monologue about his new TV show. He’d launched into it the moment Indrid and Duck were out of sight. Stern wasn’t an idiot- he knew Ned was trying to distract him, he just wasn’t sure from  _ what. _ Those two had been as blatantly in love as he’d ever seen a new couple be, and Duck was off his suspect list. Or well, he had been, until Ned _ Fucking _ Chicane started doing his very best to make sure Stern didn’t so much as glance at the man as he walked away. 

 

Damned suspicious. He’d have to ask Duck’s boyfriend how he came to be named  _ Indrid  _ anyway. The Mothman wasn’t really his case, but it was his department. 

 

Ned was (finally) interrupted by the cook coming over from the kitchen. He made eye contact with Stern a moment, making a face that smoothed over the moment Ned turned in his seat. 

 

“Thought you’d want coffee, Ned. And I brought you more tea, Agent Stern.”

 

Stern accepted it gratefully, his heart beating out a funny little tempo in his chest when he noticed he’d been brought the tea he always chose off the tray in his lodge room. The cook- Barclay? He was pretty sure it was Barclay- tugged on his ponytail as he shifted his attention to Ned.

 

“Did I just hear that Indrid and Duck booked a room together?”

 

Ned reached for the coffee on Barclay’s tray.

  
“Well yeah, because they’re probably gonna fu-”

 

Stern, despite what others thought of his profession, didn’t get much joy out of his job. Satisfaction, sure. But it didn’t amuse him when his cryptid sighting turned out to be pranking teenagers. He occasionally smiled at the odd “I brake for bigfoot” bumper sticker, and he owned some absolutely terrible T-shirts courtesy of his family and coworkers. Still, he hadn’t had a good laugh in months.

 

He didn’t realize how much he needed one until Barclay’s grip on the tray slipped and poured an entire pot of coffee into Ned Chicane’s lap. The funk he’d been in since penpals were brought up evaporated like the morning mist.

 

Ned let out a strangled noise- and really, Stern admired his resolve, that water had been steaming merrily- and Barclay dropped the tray and covered his mouth with his hands.

 

“Oh my god I am  _ so _ sorry, I’ll get you an ice pack, oh god, oh god- You can’t just say things like that when i’m holding hot liquids, Ned!”

 

Ned hissed through his teeth.

 

“Well it’s  _ true,  _ dammit!”

 

“It’s  _ what? _ ”

 

“They’re dating!”

 

The look of perfect shock on Barclay’s face had Stern’s fingers itching for his notebook. It seemed they’d hidden their relationship, which might explain Ned’s protectiveness. Interesting. He’d have to ask Duck for details.

 

Like whether or not Indrid’s surname was  _ Cold _ , for instance...

 


	5. Wish

Duck had hardly closed the door behind him before he felt arms around his waist, and he was too startled to return the hug before Indrid stepped back again, looking upset.

  
“Sorry I- there was no future in which you said no when I asked if I could hug you so-”   
  


“Of course.” Duck offered his arms again, and Indrid settled into them with a little sigh that did funny things to his pulse. 

 

This wasn’t the first time he’d hugged Indrid- there’d been another day, once, with a rough vision. But that memory only worried Duck further. His arms tightened a bit, subconsciously. The danger must have passed. Indrid would have told him if it hadn’t. Right?

 

It took Indrid a few (agonizing) minutes to find the words he wanted to say, and Duck was worried that by this point he was probably choking out Indrid with how tightly he was holding him.

  
“It’s snowing. Or- or it’s going to snow. Unexpected. Out of nowhere. Nothing sinister, just a weather fluke I couldn’t have known about it. Stern would be suspicious. Your car might have gone off the road. Now, or in the morning. They’re late with the plows since they weren’t expecting it. You should have been alright but the communications might go down in places and there are possibilities where you just don’t- you just-” 

 

Indrid took a deep, shaky breath, and stepped away before Duck could respond.

 

“It was unpleasant. One of the worst possibilities took the forefront when you mentioned the hour and it...startled me. I’m sorry to alarm you. It was easy enough to divert to better options.”

Duck could see from the set of Indrid’s jaw that diverting it didn’t take away the horror of  _ seeing _ it.

 

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

 

“I....no. I’m sorry Duck. Perhaps I am superstitious, but I’d feel better if I didn’t discuss it till I’m absolutely sure you’re not going to try to go to work tomorrow.”

 

Caught off guard, Duck chuckled.

 

“I’ll call in, if it means that much to you. Can’t leave my man alone after all.”

 

He didn’t realize how effortlessly he’d delivered the words, but Indrid had, and for the first time in a long time, the Mothman was caught off guard. It took him a moment to get back to the present, mind racing through the other possibilities to try to find why he’d missed that one, and Duck was opening the bathroom door and taking a look around.

 

“Suppose I can just use the courtesy toothbrush n’ such. Nice of Mama to put us in a nice room but-”

 

Duck went a little red, and Indrid blinked, turning.

 

His heart nearly stopped, and he disguised it with a half-hysterical snicker.

 

“Well I suppose if Agent Stern were to catch us unawares, it would look suspicious if we had two beds.”

 

Duck grumbled something nearly indecipherable. Rather then try to decode it, Indrid checked for a timeline in which he’d said that more clearly. 

 

Ah.

 

“I suspect she spotted your staring match with Ned when we entered.”

 

Duck hummed, squinting at himself in the mirror a moment longer before giving up and shrugging off his jacket.

 

Indrid frowned, trying to check timelines again, but...

 

The look on his face must have been worrying, because Duck started-

 

“Are you-”

 

“-alright? Yes. The future is being strange again, is all.”

 

Duck raised an eyebrow, rifling through his bag and emerging with a white t-shirt and a loose pair of shorts. 

 

“How so?”

 

“Well normally, people are rather mercurial. There are many things they might do. You are...much harder to read, Duck.”

 

“But what about-”

  
“-the last abomination? No, others acting on you causes variation, but sending you into a situation stabilized the future. I should have known your timeline would be just as steady. It’s just I’m not used to not....” for once, Indrid felt lost for words, but Duck half-smiled.

 

“Not being several steps ahead, behind, and side to side?”

 

Indrid smiled.

  
“Not a bad way of putting it. I am always a bit ahead, but usually being able to see possibilities also means I get a bit more insight. You, Duck, rarely change your mind once it’s set. So there was no future in which you told me why you were glaring yourself at the mirror.”

 

Duck grimaced.

 

“I don’t really wanna talk about it, Indrid.”

 

Indrid knew that was true, because his future could fragment further than Duck’s on his own. Duck would not budge. Better not to try and end up damaging....this. Whatever this was.

 

Indrid’s chest twitched a bit. There was no immediate future where Duck told him how he felt about this lie, and Indrid....well. Indrid was scared to push too far along. Immediacy was easy. The path fragmenting a thousand times could sometimes amount to little better then daydreaming for the outcome he most hoped for. Not worth the odds against it, ultimately.

 

Still, he wondered. Wished. 

 

Duck smiled at him, looking only a bit embarrassed.

 

“Do you prefer to sleep against the wall?”

 

Oh, how he wished.


	6. Some people are hard to get over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sternclay Chapter. The events behind this will be covered in this story but Also in the prequel "loaded language" so check that out if you're curious
> 
> We'll be back to Indruck on tuesday o7

Barclay didn’t know how he felt about the new developments.

 

Well, he wasn’t a big fan of trying to force Ned to put an ice-pack on his junk, but beyond that, he was a bit befuddled. Sure, Indrid and Duck spent a lot of time together, but he’d always figured it was mission stuff. And when he’d asked Mama if she’d known about it, she gave him a look that said he should have already known. He felt like he was missing something, but wasn’t sure what it was.

 

Cold comfort was that Agent Stern didn’t seem to know what was going on either, but that was probably because the idiots hadn’t bothered trying to come up with an alias for Indrid. Seriously. He wasn’t exactly the quietest himself, but Indrid had done the absolute  _ worst _ job at keeping a low profile. He’d been too reckless to let him in the lodge when he got to Kepler, not that he’d ever asked to join them. He was never one to bother with foregone conclusions.

 

Still...

 

Barclay’s head was spinning as he half-heartedly argued with Ned. Still. Indrid...

 

Well, Barclay’d never seen Indrid fall in love, so he didn’t know what it would look like. But he thought it’d look a lot like how he was with Duck in the lobby. So he had no real reason not to believe it, aside from the shock. He’d hardly known that they were  _ friends.  _ And he hadn’t gotten a real read off of Ned, what with the....pelvic burns. Eventually he just threw the ice pack at Ned with far more force then he’d intended (Ned was vain enough to cover up the black eye, whatever) and retreated to the kitchen.

 

To his surprise, he’d heard Stern excuse himself and follow him. 

 

Stern settled at the counter looking into the kitchen. His notebook was in his hands, but he wasn’t writing in it, he was just staring blankly off into space with a tight expression. Well, Barclay had assumed that Stern was  _ usually _ stressed, but he was used to those types keeping their bland smiles on while they mulled things over. 

 

....He looked like a kicked puppy.

 

....Fuck it, they were supposed to be pretending not to be suspicious anyway.

 

Stern looked up, startled, when Barclay dropped the glass in front of him.

  
“Thought you already made me my tea.”

  
Barclay snorted.

  
“That’s whiskey. Same brand as the one you hid in the bottom of your drawer.”

 

Stern raised an eyebrow, but for once, he didn’t look suspicious. 

 

“I thought I put the do-not-disturb sign out.”

 

“You missed it the night the sinkhole opened up.”

  
Stern grimaced, and Barclay instantly felt bad for bringing it up. Stern had gone sprinting out into the night to help the victims- paranormal activity or not- and Barclay actually kind of admired him for it. 

 

It just hadn’t stopped him from going over every inch of Stern’s room while he was gone.

 

Stern took a hefty swig of the glass and smiled. Barclay thought he might even be a little bit genuine.

 

“If I’d realized you served drinks I might not have bothered to go to such lengths.”

 

Barclay laughed a little bit at that, some of the weight on his shoulders lifting.

  
“Well, you’re always welcome to bring your grocery store bottle out here and sit with me. I won’t tell.”

 

Stern gave him a real smile at that, and Barclay’s heart skipped a beat. He decided to ignore it.

  
“Sorry about Ned. His advertising tactics can be a tad....exhausting.” Before Barclay had even fully finished the sentence, Stern’s shoulders were drooping again.   
  
“Oh, it wasn’t him, really. I just....remembered something I didn’t want to.”

  
“Do you wanna talk about it?” Barclay refilled Stern’s glass and poured himself one of his own, figuring that Mama would forgive him since his main job these days was to keep Stern out of everyone’s business. Besides, Stern...well. He was the enemy, but he didn’t seem to be a bad guy. Just...ill-informed.

 

Stern huffed out a laugh, rubbing his eyes.

 

“Well, it’s rather silly. They were worried about Duck because his pen pal has stopped contacting him, and it....reminded me of someone.”

 

Barclay had a  _ feeling. _ Like someone stepping on his grave. Something long quiet trying to get his attention. But lots of people had penpals. 

 

“Oh? Of who?”

 

Stern shrugged.

 

“Well, before I joined the FBI, I was just sort of....an amateur supernaturalist. I talked to a lot of people online, and....I started emailing someone with a similar interest.”

 

_ Hunting monsters. _

 

Barclay took a rather significant swig of his glass, but Stern didn’t seem to notice.

 

“We hit it off, and I....shared more than I should have. Of my personal life, and of my ambitions. I told him when I entered the FBI, and I told him about which cases I’d been assigned to-”

 

_ The Jersey Devil, Champ, The White Lady....and.... _

 

“-and he disappeared. Just dropped off the grid. All of the monsters were ones we’d discussed previously, except....well. Except Bigfoot. I’d never really been a big believer before I got the file. I don’t know if there was some....”

 

Stern huffed out a little laugh, as though realizing he’d been rambling, and took another swig of his whiskey.

 

“Some conflict of interest. But we were close, and I never heard from him again. I should be over it, it was years ago, but...”

 

“Some people are hard to get over.” Barclay’s knuckles were white on his glass, and Stern just smiled at him, unsuspecting.

  
“Yes, I suppose so. It was for the best, since I would have had to stop speaking to him anyway. One of the FBI’s internal security sweeps found my conversations and got me in a hell of a lot of trouble. Barely kept my job. ”

 

Barclay knew that. Knew it because he’d tried to respond to the message, months later, to apologize for his silence. Made up his mind to tell him the truth. Recipient not found. 

 

Some people were hard to get over. 


	7. Boyfriend

They were woken well after Duck should have been at work by the sounds of arguing outside- Barclay’s voice and and carefully modulated pleasantness of Agent Stern’s baritone.

 

“-my job, and I really insist on doing it-”

“I was hoping to speak with the ranger anyway, I might as well bring him his breakfast-”

“-might not even be awake-”

 

Duck groaned.

 

“Can’t sleep through your damn racket! It’s open!”

 

He wasn’t sure how he knew it would be- he’d locked it on his way in- but he’d felt the shift of Indrid rising and settling again in the night, and if anyone could possibly be prepared for all possible outcomes....

 

Barclay opened the door. For a moment, Duck was fiercely proud that he’d read Indrid correctly, and then the man himself shifted and grumbled, throwing an arm across Duck’s stomach and settling even closer. Duck forgot how to breathe.

 

Barclay snorted at the look on Duck’s face and set the tray of oatmeal and tea on their bedside table.

 

“Picking your priorities, Duck?”

 

Duck blinked, and then caught on.

 

“Oh, shit. Juno’s gonna have my head, I better call her.”

 

“Probably. And hey, you and Indrid? How long’s that been a thing?”

 

Duck could practically  _ feel _ Agent Stern’s attention perk, but Barclay’s expression was nothing but open curiosity, and-

 

_ And he didn’t fucking know. _

 

Duck went red.

 

“Ah- not long. We were gonna tell you guys soon but uh- um-”

 

“-Duck.”

Indrid mumbled, seemingly in his sleep, and before he could help it Duck tucked his fingers in Indrid’s hair and smoothed it back. Indrid melted against him, and again, it took a minute for Duck to remember what it was he was going to say.

 

“-His heaters went out last night and you know- with his anemia- it was more of an emergency then a social visit.”

 

Barclay nodded, looking pacified, and Duck felt his confidence up a bit from that success.

 

“Actually, Agent Stern, whatever you need to talk to me about, can it wait? I need to let work know I need to look after my- my-”

 

Indrid let out a soft little sound, and Duck found the words.

 

“My boyfriend.”


	8. For better or for worse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is. just moshicane. like to the point where you can just. skip if it you're not into moshicane. nothing happens. moshicane.

Ned was up early.

 

Ned  _ hated _ being up early.

 

The Cryptonomica opened as late as it did for a damned reason, and that reason was that  _ Ned really hated being up early. _

 

But, well.

 

He'd never been able to refuse his husband anything. 

 

Still, he grumbled to himself as he pulled his car into the parking lot of Amnesty lodge. His heart felt like it was in pieces as he scanned the lot for Boyd. He wasn’t sure, at this point, what would be worse- if Boyd stayed or if he ran away back across the ocean to the UK. Neither was a good option. For a second, he considered asking Aubrey if her magic could turn back time.

 

But if that was possible, she'd have gone back already. They'd shared the worst night of both of their lives, after all. 

 

He didn’t hear Boyd get into the car so much as slowly became aware of his presence, and once he had he didn't want to admit he hadn't noticed him get in, so he brooded some more. 

 

“Going to give yourself a headache, thinking so hard.”

 

“I lied to you.”

 

Boyd didn’t say anything, so Ned charged on, not looking at him. 

 

“Well, not really, but a lie by omission, I guess. You asked me to do this and I didn't....” he took a deep breath, a little shaky. 

 

Boyd reached out for him and he took the offered hand, neither of them thinking about it. Old habits, he supposed. 

 

“I know her. This artist of yours. We're...well. We're kind of friends, but also, she's....not someone I would mess with.”

 

Ned waited, and he didn't let go of Boyd's hand, but he also didn't look over as he felt Boyd search his face. 

 

“You're not lying.” Boyd sounded  _ surprised _ , and damn if that didn't sting, after everything.

 

“Wouldn't lie to you.” 

 

Boyd snorted, but Ned meant it, so he turned to look Boyd in his stupid (goddamn beautiful) crystal blue eyes. 

 

And he said it again. 

 

And Boyd believed him, he could tell by how angry he looked about it. 

 

“Dammit, Ned. You can't just-” He pulled his hand away, and Ned let it go. Boyd's expression was at war with itself. 

 

“This isn't over, Ned.”

 

“I sure hope not.” that came out sounding way sappier then he intended, so he tried it again. “Because I need a bunch of my shit back.”

 

Boyd actually smiled at that, but there was a little shimmer in the corners of his eyelids. 

 

“Damn you to Hell, Ned Chicane.”

 

“That's my name, don't wear it out.”

 

Boyd got out of the car, but Ned could hear the smile in his voice, even with his back turned.

 

“No it isn't.”

 

__

 

Ned sat behind the wheel a long time after he'd left, but eventually he sighed. He had to go set up in the kitchen, maybe catch up Barclay. 

 

...except, well, it would be really funny if he didn't....

 

Ned sighed. Well. Stern could be listening in. It wasn’t safe to talk about the....reality of Duck’s relationship till they were in the base. So maybe he could let it hang a little bit later and feel like a little bit less of a complete ass about it.

 

Maybe


	9. Coming Out

Indrid spent the minutes listening to Duck fumble his way through the lies trying to factor though what he  _ knew _ .

 

As much as the others might think he was, he wasn’t a mind reader. Without a chance in the near future of Duck saying how he felt, Indrid had no way to know. Duck was, as much as Indrid lo-....cared about him,  _ terribly  _ stubborn. He’d made up his mind not to talk about the source of his self-consciousness, and he wasn’t saying in the near future how he felt about this situation, either. Indrid wasn’t peering any further forward then he needed to to avoid Agent Stern’s meddling. He got the sense that things could turn out either way- despite his reticince, his dreams had provided plenty of details. He and Duck, sitting on the roof alone and holding each other. Duck, chasing his cat down the street as a truck runs a red light. Duck’s door, stark white as Indrid knocks and he refuses to answer. Duck holding his hand and leading him into his apartment kitchen, comfort in the air and in every gesture. A thousand ways it could go right. A thousand ways it could go wrong. 

 

And that was assuming things with Stern didn’t go nuclear.

 

Indrid didn’t like this- he wasn’t normally like this. Normally the futures he couldn’t keep out of his dreams were the fate-of-the-world stuff. Big picture. Big disasters. A single event that would be hard to escape. 

 

This was...not something he could have planned for. All these futures weighing on him, things that should have been inconsequential.

 

Why was it important?

Of course Duck was important- but so was Aubrey, and so was Ned. All the residents of the lodge had a role to play, but the future hinged on those three, not just on Duck.

 

Indrid had never let his feelings focus his visions before.

 

Was that all it was?

 

____

 

Duck had suspected that Indrid was faking sleep, but he still withdrew himself carefully from the sheets as he went to go get the payphone.

 

Fortunately, his unsuccessful patting down of his pockets was met by someone offering a quarter.

 

Unfortunately, the person offering was Agent Stern.

 

Duck tried for a smile that definitely looked more like a grimace, but he took the coin and dialed. Juno picked up, and Duck felt bizarrely disappointed- of course there was no one else there, but he’d had some impossible wish that someone else would pick up the phone. 

 

“Hey, Juno. I’m sorry, I won’t make it in today. I’m at the lodge with a....friend.”

 

Duck could  _ feel _ Juno raise her eyebrows the same time he saw Agent Stern raise his. Fuck. Indrid wasn’t here to bail him out fuck what-

  
“Real special friend if you’re missing work for him.”

 

Okay. He had an honest answer to that one.

  
“He is, yeah.”

 

“Reeeaaaaal special?”

 

Duck made a tiny wheezing sound as he tried to figure out what to say to that, and Juno actually gasped.

 

“Duck Newton! Are you tryin to lie to me? Do you have a  _ boyfriend? _ ”

 

Okay, that was loud enough that Agent Stern definitely heard it. Duck winced.

 

“Uh, well, maybe?”

 

“MAYBE?”

 

“I’m just sayin’ if I did I wouldn’t want you screamin’ about it to God and everyone, Juno!”

 

Juno actually laughed.

  
“There’s no-one here but me, Duck, you know that. So why haven’t I met this man of yours, huh?”

 

“Well, um. I...”

 

“He can’t feel too good about you hidin’ him! Oh, wait, is he not out? Shit I’m sorry Duck-”

 

“It’s...it’s okay. Uh. He’s out...now.” True, actually, though he didn’t know if sylvans cared about how their sexuality was perceived earthside. Shit, he hoped Indrid wasn’t straight. “He was kinda scared of bein’ around people in town and I can’t really blame him.” 

 

Duck let himself pretend for a moment that he had friends he could tell the whole truth to, and that he wasn’t just talking in statements without context.

 

“Well that’s mighty fine, Duck. Glad that’s going well for you.” She paused. “Hey wait a damned minute that doesn’t explain why you weren’t  _ here this morning-” _

 

Duck winced. Caught again.

 

“Sorry Juno, he....” shit shit shit what was the truth. That’s what Aubrey told him- take the truth, then take out as many words as you can. “...He didn’t want me to leave him by himself here at the lodge. His heating’s out at home.”

 

“Oh. Well. thanks for not just bullshittin’ me and reporting a cold. I’ll see you tomorrow then?”

 

“Count on it.” It was only a little strangled sounding.

 

Duck hung up and let out a sigh of relief that got even easier once he realized Agent Stern had stepped away from blatantly eavesdropping to go back to his usual table and the latest copy of the Lamplighter. When he hung the phone back up Stern gave him a look that was almost....guilty.....?

 

For once, Duck didn’t get a bad feeling when Stern got up to talk to him again.

 

“Sorry about pushing you, Duck. I know it’s hard to be...well I know it’s hard to be...” Stern gestured vaguely, and it took Duck a minute to figure out what the Hell he was talking about. Then it clicked.

 

“Oh, you’re...”

 

“Gay, yeah. I didn’t mean to push you, I just got a little bit of the investigation bug I suppose! Can you pass on my apologies to Indrid? I didn’t mean to make his coming out any harder.”

 

Duck tried not to visibly flinch as he realized that their lie had just gotten more complicated.

  
“Uh, yeah. I’ll tell him.”

 

Stern went back to his Lamplighter, and Duck tried not to sprint back to the room with Indrid.

 

Oh boy, he  _ really _ hoped they were going to pull this off.


	10. Mixed Success

Barclay didn’t like the look on Ned’s face when he returned from eavesdropping on Duck and Stern. It was the kind of look Ned got right before he informed you that he’d gotten a nerf blaster off of the most powerful weaponsmith on either of their worlds, or before he asked to borrow a can of spray paint to deface his new car. Still, Barclay was apparently incapable of learning from his mistakes, because he went ahead and started on coffee while Ned was still lurking in the doorway.

 

“Are you going to tell me what your plan is, or are you just going to stand there and smirk?”

 

Ned huffed.

  
“Cryptonomica doesn’t open till 11, I got plenty of time to do both.”

 

“My tolerance for your bullshit only goes so far, Ned.”

 

“Fine, fine. Spoil my fun.”

 

Ned paused, thinking it over as Barclay pulled the coffee pot from the machine.

 

“You need to seduce Agent Stern.”

 

Barclay dropped the coffee pot, and this time he was the one who got pelted with hot water and broken glass as it hit the ground between his feet.

 

“Son of a BITCH, Ned!”

 

“What? I’m serious! He’s gay! You gotta go for it! Uh, also, I think your leg is-”

 

Barclay looked down. He’d picked a bad day to wear sandals, but it was a small comfort that the piece of shattering class that had gotten him was in his leg above the sock line. So there was no avoiding it, really. 

 

Huh. That had probably hit a vein. That was....a lot of blood.

 

Ned was backing out like he was afraid of or for Barclay, and Barclay was considering tipping that scale toward the former with a well aimed coffee mug, when Stern flung the kitchen door open.

 

“Everything alright? I thought I heard-” He stopped, taking in the scene of Ned in the doorway and Barclay with a piece of broken glass in his leg.

“Stern.” Barclay kept his voice calm, if a bit strained. “Do you think you could grab the medkit from the front desk?”

 

Stern took off like a shot, and Barclay shifted his glare back to Ned.

 

“Ned. You have 20 seconds to get out of my kitchen. Help the poor man find the medkit. Don't come back in here.”

 

Ned let out a strangled noise and booked it. 

 

Served him right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If by any chance you enjoy the interlude chapters, hit me up @callingcardinal on tumblr for links to the moshicane discord server or the sternclay server!


	11. The Straight and Narrow

Duck opened the door, and Indrid burst out laughing.

 

He stopped dead, but Indrid gestured him in, glasses bobbing up and down as he tried to get his snickering under control. Duck looked around to see if there was a TV in here, or....

 

Or.

 

Oh.

 

Duck sighed.   
  
“Alright, what’d I do? Or what was I about to-”

 

He remembered what he was about to say, and flushed.

  
“Hey it’s not that-  _ Indrid- _ ”

 

Indrid had started laughing again the second Duck had started down that path again, another likely future no doubt presenting itself. 

 

“ _ Indrid. _ ”

 

“As much as I enjoy hearing you say my name, Duck, it’s not going to make up for you walking in here with serious intent to  _ ask me if i’m straight. _ ”

 

Duck flushed fluorescent red, which just made Indrid wheeze harder.

 

“Oh c’mon, it’s a valid-”

“ _ Question!  _ No it isn’t, Duck, it really isn’t. Oh my.” Indrid adjusted his glasses to wipe the corners of his eyes, and Duck caught a second’s glance at his dark gray eyes before they were covered again. “Do you think Mama and Barclay would have been able to keep their emotional reactions controlled with no warning if I-” Indrid trailed off, trying to find the words.

 

_ ‘If I couldn’t see myself with you’ _ was what came to mind, but no, Indrid was trying to play his cards closer to his chest then that.

  
“Were straight? Yeah I guess that tracks.” Duck scuffed his toe on the ground, scowling a bit.

 

“...Not to distract from this wonderful conversation, but I actually had something else I was going to ask you.”

 

Duck hesitated, and Indrid took the moment to look ahead.

 

“ _ How don’t you know what happened to me.”  _ Indrid echoed the words as Duck voiced them, thinking about it.

 

“My connection is to this world now, and to a lesser extent, to Sylvain. I have suspected for a while that you have another connection. I cannot access it. I have seen the shift around you, and the echo of an energy signature, no more.”

 

Duck relaxed visibly, and Indrid tried not to let it bother him. People were entitled to what few secrets they could keep from him. It was just....that no one had ever actually managed to keep one before now.

 

But this was Duck. he was worth it. 

 

Still, something about the question bothered him. It should have....if his visions had been focusing on Duck, and something had happened to him, he should have been at least marginally aware of it. He’d check his sketches at the camper, but he couldn’t remember seeing...anything. Duck had just arrived to visit him as usual one week, looking completely wrecked.

 

Indrid had a bad feeling, but he pushed it aside.

 

“Do you think we could make a trip to my camper today? I’m missing my art supplies.”

 

He had to know for sure.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here comes....the plot


	12. The other side of the mask

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sternclay update! (next indruck's on Saturday!)

Stern came sprinting back in with the medkit and without Ned, so Barclay was feeling pretty good. 2 for 2. He should probably be more worried about being injured and vulnerable in front of the FBI agent who was actively hunting him, but as Stern wrapped an arm around his waist and helped him into a chair he couldn’t quite keep a hold on his suspicions.

 

Stern pulled off his suit jacket and his tie, tossing them on the counter and dropping to his knees in front of Barclay, who found himself wanting those things in more pleasant circumstances.

 

Dammit Barclay, secret agent here to kill you. Focus. 

 

Stern didn’t seem to notice his embarrassment or his hesitation, focusing on getting the glass out with a long pair of tweezers. 

 

“I hope you don’t usually get this injured around the lodge.”

 

Barclay snorted, replying before he could think better of it:

 

“Only when Ned’s involved.”

 

Stern’s usual placid expression- what Barclay had been thinking of as his ‘agent face’- broke for a moment, and he looked genuinely worried. Barclay placed his hand on Stern’s before he could think better of it.

 

“Not like that- he’s just an idiot.” 

 

That....was not a sentence he should have said in that tone. All heartfelt. Blech.

 

The corner of Stern’s lip twitched through the Agent Face, and Barclay couldn’t help but grin in return. They sat there for just a beat longer than they should have before Stern looked away, no doubt noticing that Barclay was still bleeding. 

 

“...Sorry. I’m not usually so scatterbrained.”

 

“I know. Don’t worry about it. It’s been....kind of a rough week around here, I think.”

 

Barclay only realized when Stern looked startled (his eye twitched, just a tad) that he shouldn’t have been so assured about that. He shouldn’t have known. Barclay tried to think of a better way of phrasing it, but hissed as Stern touched an antiseptic wipe to one of the cuts.   
  
“Fuck, I’m sorry.” Stern’s voice was....totally deadpan. That was kind of creepy, and...

 

Barclay did a mental shake. He had to stop convincing himself he knew Stern. Hell, he might not even know the man’s name. Sure, Stanley had seemed like a real name, and he hadn’t hadn't exactly offered it willingly, but-

 

Stanley had always been excitable, bubbly, prone to going on at length about cryptids and all the stories that excited him. Agent Stern looked like he kept his emotions under 20 different masks, like when he put on his suit he put on a whole different personality.

 

It hurt a little bit more than Barclay was expecting, and he tried to hide it behind the sting of the antiseptic. 

 

Stern’s mask was starting to dissolve, and he was handling Barclay’s leg with care as he started to bandage it. 

 

“You should be more careful.” 

 

Barclay had a feeling Stern was shooting for lighthearted, but it came out a little tense, and he smiled past the twist in his chest.

 

“I will.”

 

He couldn’t end up in this position again. His heart couldn’t take it. 


	13. the world giving way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> guess what time it is!
> 
> it's time for the PLOT

Indrid tried to stop himself from tapping his fingers on the window as Duck drove, but honestly, it was shaping up to be a particularly stressful week and he wasn’t too inclined to fight terribly hard to resist the impulse. 

 

As they drove, he decided he had to give in. Something was happening, and it was more important than worrying about the state of his relationship with Duck. He mentally grabbed a timeline and pulled. The flashes he’d dreamed of came back to him, and-

 

And-

 

“Duck.”

 

He must have sounded panicked, because Duck pulled over with a little bit more force then was typically recommended, Indrid’s seatbelt locking as he was flung against it.

 

“What is it? Do we need to turn back? In-....Indrid?”

 

Indrid wasn’t sure what his facial expression looked like, but evidently it was alarming, because Duck unfastened his seatbelt to lean across the seat and put his hand on Indrid’s shoulder, his thumb moving in small circles.

  
“Indrid what’s happening? Talk to me.”

 

Indrid was trying not to panic. He hadn’t pulled hard, hadn’t tried to force it, but he’d never needed to before. The visions felt like they usually did, but-

  
“I think the abomination is here. I can’t see forward. I can just....I can just see memories.”

 

Duck’s eyebrows pulled together.

 

“Everyone’s memories?”

 

Indrid shook his head, trying to clamp down on his panic.

  
“Just...It’s hard to tell. Things start to get brighter. Like film that’s disappearing when the door opens it just gets brighter and harder to see and then it’s all just-”

 

“Do we need to go back?”

  
“Yes but-” Indrid took a deep breath, trying to steady himself.

 

“Maybe I got some visions before this thing was close enough to block my sight. I need to see if any of my drawings have an answer.”

 

Duck didn’t need to hear that twice, pulling the car back into drive and getting back on the road. Normally, Indrid would tease him for speeding, but it didn’t feel right.

 

Indrid tried to keep his breathing steady, and hoped when they got to the camper he would have the answers he needed to protect everyone. Just a couple more miles.

__

 

Duck was worried about Indrid.

 

He’d taken his hand out of habit- and wasn’t that a thought, that it just came out of instinct to reach out for him now- and Indrid’s fingers were ice cold and clamped into a death-grip around his. He would find it endearing if he weren’t so goddamn worried. 

 

Indrid kept up the tapping on the window with his other hand, and Duck tried to let it ground him. What was it that therapist he’d had in senior year said? Somethin’ about focusing on what was around you and letting it anchor you. He tried to focus on his breathing, the road, the feeling of Indrid’s hand in his, the sound of Indrid’s fingers on the window. They’d been fighting abominations for months. They could handle one more.

 

Except....this wasn’t the same as the others, was it?

 

Indrid didn’t panic.

 

No matter what they’d gone through, the only time he’d seen Indrid this hysterical was when he’d been captured and told them about the sinkhole. Not imminent danger- he had faith in them to get through that- but a disaster in progress. The world literally falling out from beneath their feet.

 

This was major league bad news.

 

They pulled up outside, and Duck reached over to pull open the glovebox- sorting through papers and pulling out an extra pair of gloves and a scarf for Indrid.

 

“I know it’s a short walk, but-”

 

Indrid just smiled at him, and for the first time since he’d seen Indrid’s eyes go flat asking for his sketchbook, Duck really thought that everything was going to turn out okay.

 

He went around the car to let Indrid out, and held his hand as they went inside the Winnebago.


	14. The search for meaning

Aubrey felt like she’d missed a lot.

 

She passed Duck and Indrid heading to Duck’s car- both of them gave her a wave as they passed, Duck with the arm that wasn’t around Indrid’s waist.

 

He didn’t even seem remotely flustered.

 

Huh.

 

She filed that one away for future reference as she went inside, going straight toward the kitchen and flinging open the door.

 

“Hey Barclay how long have-”

 

She stopped.

 

Agent Stern was in just his button down, his tie and jacket off, on his knees in front of Barclay, who was staring at her with the most cartoonishly guilty expression she’d ever seen. 

 

“Oh  _ shit.  _ Uh. Sorry for interrupting-” she went to close the door, but Stern turned from his spot on the floor and gave her an easy smile (shit, had she ever seen him smile before? What the fuck?)

 

“Hello Ms. Little. I was just dressing Barclay’s leg.”

 

“Huh?” she managed. But now that Stern had turned, she could see Barclay’s legs- he was in shorts, and his legs were covered in bandages. 

 

“Oh, shit! What happened?”

 

Barclay grimaced.

  
“Ned.”

 

Aubrey nodded gravely.

 

“Oh, speaking of....uh, speaking of no one in particular....Did I see Indrid and Duck cuddling on their way out of here?”

  
“Yeah, you did.”

 

“Fuck! I wish they’d kept a lid on it another week, I owe Ned like 20 bucks.”

 

Barclay snorted.

 

“Am I the only one who didn’t see this coming?”

 

“Uh, yeah. But you haven’t had to watch them fussing over each other, so...”

 

Stern snorted, and Aubrey was a little startled. She’d almost forgotten he was there.

  
“If it makes you feel better, Barclay, I didn’t see it coming either.”

 

Barclay laughed, low and easy, and Aubrey felt again like she was interrupting something.

 

“No offense, St...Stern. But I’m not sure that’s saying much.”   
  


Aubrey narrowed her eyes, but Stern let the stumble pass, smiling as he got off the floor. 

 

“That’s fair. Though I am supposed to be an intelligence agent- which reminds me, I have to get driving if I want to make my check-in call. Are you going to be alright?”

 

“Yeah.” Barclay looked like he had to force himself to keep it to one word, but Stern just gave him another smile and headed past Aubrey to the door.

 

“I’ll see you both later. Ms. Little, Barclay.”

 

“Bye,” Barclay managed, a couple of seconds after the door closed.

 

Aubrey waited until she couldn’t hear Stern’s steps retreating, and then rounded on Barclay.

  
“Holy shit! You and Agent Stern??”

 

Barclay was doing a pretty good impression of a deer about to get hit by a car.

 

“Wh- what? No! We’re- No!”

 

“Oh come on! What’s his name?? You totally almost said it! And he was just calling you Barclay!! He’s on a last name basis with everybody else-”

  
“He doesn’t know my last name.” Barclay tried, but Aubrey knew a dodge when she saw one.

 

“But you totally know his first name! What is it!!”

 

“I- no I don’t.”

 

“Oh come on, you’re not as bad a liar as Duck but you’re getting there right now.”   
  


Barclay groaned, putting his head in his hands.

 

“If I tell you you have to swear to me on pain of death that no one else can know about this.”

 

She bounded over and hopped up on the table next to him.

 

“Scout’s honor!”

 

“We....” Barclay sighed. “We were friends online a really long time ago, but he doesn’t know it’s me, and he  _ can’t _ know, because things would get complicated if he did.”

 

Aubrey raised her eyebrows.

  
“How complicated?”

 

Barclay scowled.

 

“It was a forum for  _ monster hunters. _ ”

 

“...oh.”

 

There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that, so Aubrey sat in quiet for a moment. But, the Lady Flame rarely gave up on things, so she tried again.

  
“...So what’s his name?”

 

Barclay sighed.

 

“Stanley. As far as I know, anyway. He could have lied.”

 

“I don’t think he’d lie to you.” Aubrey didn’t have any way to know, but as she said it, it felt right. Barclay seemed to think so too, because he didn’t fight her on it. They sat in silence a minute longer, and Aubrey was just about to try to find something else to say (or ask him to pick a card) when the kitchen door opened.

 

The relief she felt at the sight of Duck evaporated again at his expression.

 

“What is it?”

 

Duck held up a drawing.

  
“This mean anything to you?”

 

Aubrey looked at it- it was to Indrid’s exacting quality, charcoal on paper. A rather large house, high pillars, smudged over as though smoke was about to begin pouring from the windows.

  
She could see the smoke in her mind’s eye, saw it fill the air, the fire, the-

 

“Yeah.” She choked out. “Yeah, that....that was my house. But it’s not standing anymore, so I don’t know why Indrid...”

 

Duck looked grave, and she was grateful as he pulled the paper away from her again.

 

“All his visions past tomorrow are like this. I think we better get Mama. We’re on the hunt.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey I can't fucking hyperlink but https://callingcardinal.tumblr.com/post/183143068681/yo-i-made-a-sternclay-server 
> 
> check it out if the sternclay chapters are more then just an annoying plot diversion (and hey, if they are, thanks for sticking around anyway! Ily) (Keep in mind that it isn't that I ship sternclay harder then I ship indruck, it's just there are at least two indruck servers already!)


	15. Sink or swim

Duck had a sinking feeling in his gut already, but it rolled like a barrel off a waterfall when he got finished explaining. Mama just....sat there. No plans, no comments. She hardly even looked like she was thinking, she just looked vacant.

 

Barclay was pacing, and Duck thought he probably wasn’t too thrilled about this either. Aubrey rubbed her forehead.

 

“I’m sorry, Duck, but could you run it by me one more time? Just...one more time.”

 

Duck sighed. He wished Indrid were here. But when they’d gotten to the lobby Indrid had told him rather breezily to “have fun with his friends!” and then kissed him on the cheek and wandered off toward the hot springs, making loud conversation with Stern on his way past. 

 

The spot still felt cool. Duck ran his thumb across it for strength.

 

“It’s going to be built out of memories. Indrid doesn’t know much, because he can’t see what’s going to happen to everybody once we’re fightin’ it. The more he pushes the more of everybody’s memories he gets, and we figured that’s not helpin’ the situation any. The more people that go in the harder a time it’ll have holdin’ onto us, but he doesn’t know what the thing’s gonna be like. We’re gonna risk sharin’....well. We’re gonna risk sharing everything. And it’s probably going to try to set us against each other.”

 

Something about the way Indrid had said that while clutching the sketch of Aubrey’s house gave Duck a terrible feeling. He was hoping he was wrong, but...

 

Aubrey looked at Mama, and then to Duck. She tipped her head, and Duck felt a little whisper of wind curl against his ear. He nodded resolutely and tried to think of a good lie.

 

Thankfully, Ned got there first (Duck thanked all his lucky stars and also Aubrey who’d probably been smart enough to send the signal to Ned first, thank  _ god _ )

 

“Well, I think we all need to sit on that for a while. Let's rendezvous later- we still have time to kill this thing, and I’m pretty sure I saw Agent Stern follow Indrid to the hot spring.”

 

Ned winked at Duck.

 

“Gotta defend what’s yours, ranger.”

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Duck saw Barclay’s expression drop before he could get a lid on it, and wondered what the hell  _ that _ was about. 

 

“Don’t think I need to do any defendin’, but it’s probably a good idea to bail him out. You comin’, Barclay?”

Barclay shot a glance at Mama, who was tapping her fingers on the table in the angry tattoo of a drum calling soldiers to war.

 

“Uh- yeah. I think i’m on better terms with him then you guys are.”

 

Duck nodded, staying resolute, not saying any words so as not to stutter, and they made their way out, leaving Mama at the table.

 

By an unspoken agreement, they followed Aubrey down the hall and into her room in the lodge, and set themselves up in the loose circle they’d been in downstairs- Aubrey sitting on her bed with Duck on the end of it, Ned leaning on the wall, Barclay sitting at Aubrey’s writing desk.

 

Ned’s hands clenched and unclenched. When he spoke, his voice was tight.

 

“Is it better to lay it all out on the table now, do you think? To be honest?”

 

“No.”

 

Ned and Aubrey looked with matching expressions of shock to Duck, who grimaced.

 

“Indrid warned me. The memories are going to come as though we’re there in the moment. No warning’s gonna help. So it’s better that we’re all....okay. If we go in upset and distrusting each other it’s gonna be ugly.”

 

Ned looked relieved, and Duck didn’t wanna analyze that one too closely.

 

Aubrey sighed, twisting her sheets up in her hands.

 

“I don’t think we can bring Mama with us on this one.”

 

Barclay nodded.

 

“No backup. The others....” Barclay rubbed his thumb across his pendant. “The others here have been through things once that it would break them to experience again, let alone whatever else is in my head or any of yours.”

 

Duck nodded, resolute.

 

“Don’t think you can stop Indrid from comin’, though, so...”

 

“I bet you wouldn’t want to stop indrid from co-” Aubrey was cut off by a well timed pillow from Duck, who was definitely  _ not _ blushing, dammit.

 

“You know we’re n-”

 

The door was flung open, cutting him off, and Indrid flounced in. Duck had absolutely no time to react to  _ that _ before his arms and lap were full of the mothman in the fluffiest bathrobe Duck had ever felt. 

 

Duck choked on his own tongue, and Indrid grinned at him from behind his glasses.

 

“Hello, dear. How’d the conversation go?”

 

Duck couldn’t quite form a response, but Indrid settled his head on Duck’s neck and whispered-

 

_ “The room is bugged. Door frame.” _

 

That wasn’t  _ quite _ enough to put Duck’s mind completely off Indrid, bathrobe, lap, but his expression of alarm seemed to have tipped off the others that something was up.

 

Aubrey sighed, dramatically.

 

“As I was saying, the last trip to the escape room wasn’t  _ that _ bad, Barclay, Jeez. Quit making it sound so apocalyptic.”

 

Barclay caught on fast, though he grimaced dramatically as if to say  _ really, that’s the best you could come up with? _

 

“I don’t know how the escape room went so wildly wrong that Jake cries every time you mention it,  _ Aubrey, _ but i’m definitely not making him go along this time.”

 

Ned let out his practiced stage-laugh, and Duck tried to ignore how shakey it sounded.

 

“I think it’s better for your relationship if you don’t remind Dani how competitive you get, Aubrey! It’s supposed to be cooperative!”

 

“I thought we were trying not to air our grievances before going into the escape room,  _ Ned _ .” Barclay seemed to be trying not to laugh, and that at least made Duck feel a little bit better.

 

Indrid  _ giggled _ , and despite how staged it sounded Duck felt wonderfully warm at the little shake against his chest.

 

“I’m sure we’ll all be closer as friends at the end of it. I can tell these things.” 

 

Indrid sounded serious, and as he settled into Duck’s chest and the fake argument turned into a (very stupid) real one, Duck thought that he’d take his word for it. 

* * *

 


	16. The Wider World

Agent Stern was pretty confident that none of the amnesty lodge residents were _bad people,_ per say.

 

Unfortunately, that didn’t mean they weren’t hiding something. And if the way they dodged around corners when he was involved was any indication, it was something big.

 

He hoped it wasn’t another fucking cult. He hated dealing with cults. 

 

He hadn’t wanted Barclay to be mixed up in it, so he’s removed the bugs in the kitchen, and _immediately_ been made to regret it when the ranger had come barreling in. They’d all left together, and Stern had to face the fact that he’d been naive.

 

Barclay’s voice was plain as day on the recording he’d gotten off of Aubrey’s doorframe.[1]

 

_...let alone whatever else is in my head or any of yours._

Indrid was too good at guessing when things were going to happen.[2] He’d cut off the conversation in the room at precisely the point at which he was mentioned.

 

His voice was familiar, and Stern couldn’t place it. That didn’t happen.[3] That didn’t happen except-

 

Stern frowned, tapping his pen against the page of his notebook. He was set up in his car, no longer entirely confident in how secure the lodge was. He never forgot a voice. If he couldn’t place it, it was probably not speaking the language he’d originally heard it in.

 

Stern tipped his head, trying to mentally run Indrid’s voice through phrases in his head. Russian? No. Arabic? No. Spanish? No, but closer. Romance languages. French?

 

Italian.

 

Shit.

 

Shit shit shit shit.

 

He took a deep breathe and pulled up the recording from Ned’s coat. He’d been trying not to use these recordings, honestly, because a part of him didn’t want to know. Plausible deniability. He looked at the file for a moment, and then he thought about Barclay and the way he’d stumbled across his name.

 

Fuck.

 

He deleted it, rubbing his forehead. Why now? Why did he have to be compromised on the one case he couldn’t afford to fail? Bigfoot was too big, a list of deaths in a neat bulleted line. The one case he’d never been able to crack.

 

Three mysterious phone calls. Stern ran them through in his head.

 

He was 16, listening at the door as his father talked about the call that saved his life[4]

He was 23, on his first assignment, in the desert in Iran. An invitation to a fight he had no idea the magnitude of. And the third, an hour later, scolding him for not heeding the warning better.

 

Stern drummed his fingers on his notebook, and unfolded a card he kept tucked into his pocket. He hadn’t called the number since. Every problem he’d encountered had seemed too small by comparison, and then the FBI had re-trained him, and he’d spent the next few years under such close watch that all his calls were recorded and checked. 

 

Still, he’d kept the phone number. It had seemed like a lifeline, a ticket to a train that would always be there waiting, should he only choose to board it.

 

He didn’t think this would be the moment.

 

He dialed the number.

 

It didn’t ring, and for a moment Stern thought the line had gone dead. And then the unmistakable voice of Indrid Cold spoke to him through the line, in the old roll of slightly disused Italian.

 

“ _Hello, Stanley. I think we have a lot to talk about.”_  

 

[1]he trusted no one who wore sunglasses day and night, no matter how affable.

[2]and once again, he trusted no one who never removed their glasses. It was a policy that had saved his life and only gotten him written up once for discriminating against blind old ladies.

[3] Stern had many faults, he would admit that, but his memory was impeccable.

[4] when his father had been killed in the line of duty when Stern was 25, he’d wondered why there had been no saving grace. Perhaps some futures couldn’t be avoided.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A twist! unless you read loaded language. In which case you already knew about all of this.
> 
> See you all on tuesday for Indrid's POV!


	17. Trust Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having a bad day, so this chapter's early. Have at it.

Indrid was having trouble focusing on the conversation, despite its importance. Speaking to Stern brought new visions forward, and the light blinded them out of his way again. Every time he reached it seemed the ability to see got further away. He tried to step back, to let them show themselves as they saw fit, but that wasn’t quite working either. 

 

He hummed into the phone, and heard a tinny, broken up sigh.

 

“ _ -anything - say?” _

 

“Ah, unfortunately no.”

 

In hindsight, it was a miracle that he’d even gotten one clear sentence out, and probably a testament to FBI electronics (and stolen FBI electronics).

 

They were back in their room (Indrid felt warm about that.  _ Their  _ room) but not even the comfort could ease the pressure building in his skull. Duck was tucked against his side, filtering out his tension from the point of contact of their sides. Diffusion. Indrid wondered how he’d made it through years of artificial warmth. The real thing was much better.

 

Stern sighed again, through the phone, the sound like the verbal equivalent of pixilation, and Indrid couldn’t help but smile. 

 

The call dropped, and Indrid looked to Duck.

 

“Do you trust me?”

 

“Of course.” Duck hadn’t hesitated. He was reading one of the books from the arcane library- a pair of reading glasses balanced on his nose. When he smiled at Indrid a vision wormed its way through the mist of pure white in his mind. They’re older, Duck’s hair is silver instead of blue at the roots. Duck smiles.  _ You never have to ask. _

 

Indrid blinks and it’s gone.

 

“I know I can’t ask you to lie, but there are things that would be worse if they were...open information. I don’t want to hide from you.”

 

Indrid clung to the few visions he could see of the next few minutes. He felt like he was living backwards in time from the source of the disturbance - seeing the earthquake as he tried to keep his feet steady.

 

Duck’s eyebrows pulled together.

 

“Can’t say I’m super comfortable with that, but I know mama can be a bit...trigger happy.”

 

There’s a knock on the door. Duck raises an eyebrow at Indrid, but he smiles, and Indrid takes that as approval.

 

“It’s open!” he calls.

 

Stern opens the door, and Indrid can feel Duck side-eyeing him as the agent closes it behind him. Without thinking much about it, Indrid takes Duck’s hand and squeezes it.  _ Trust me _ he thinks, hoping the message comes across. Duck relaxes against his side, and Indrid wonders if Duck feels the same - if the point of contact makes him feel as safe as indrid does at his side.

He hopes.

 

Stern looks kind of startled to see Duck, and he stands there for a moment, awkward, before Duck sighs.

 

“Sit down wherever. ‘Drid, did you want me here? Think maybe the less I hear the better.”

 

Indrid did, desperately, want him to stay, but unfortunately Duck was correct. The more he heard the harder it would be for him not to spill the proverbial beans.

 

Actually, that was easily solved. He smiled at Duck.

 

“You don’t speak italian, do you?”


	18. Talk it out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moschicane, last chapter before the hunt

Boyd was sitting on the couch in the back room of the Cryptonomica when Ned got home, drinking a soda he’d apparently charmed Kirby into buying for him. 

 

“All I’m saying is that Salvador Mundi sold for 450 Million! They say you can’t put a price on art, but that’s quite a price.”

 

Kirby snorted, taking a swig of his own soda.

 

“Yeah well, most artists aren’t exactly gonna make that kind of money in their lifetimes. I’m happy enough that people even see my stuff here-oh, hey Ned.”

 

Boyd looked up to the door and gave Ned a smile that made his insides melt. Dammit. He wanted to be furious that he was that easy to get to.

 

“Hello Kirby… Boyd.”

 

Kirby blinked at Boyd.

 

“Oh, you know Ned? I thought you were just here about the Lamplighter.”

 

Boyd didn’t look even the slightest bit ashamed.

 

“A man can have multiple motivations.”

 

Ned’s eyelid twitched. Kirby raised an eyebrow.

  
“How do you two know each other?”

 

Boyd grinned, and Ned wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of answering that.

 

“Ah, yes, how terribly rude of me.” Ned held it for a moment, waiting for Kirby to take a sip of his drink. “Kirby, I’d like you to meet my husband.”

 

Kirby reacted exactly as expected. Boyd tried to give him a disappointed look, but Ned knew what the tiny crinkle at the corner of his lips looked like when he was trying not to smile. 

 

“What--” Kirby wheezed. “--what the fuck? You have a husband? Where the fuck has he been?”

 

And because Kirby hadn’t quite learned the association between cause and effect, he went to take another swig.

 

“Jail.” Boyd supplied, nonchalant.

  
  


That time, soda came out of Kirby’s nose, and Boyd couldn’t keep down a snicker. 

 

“Alright.” Ned was smiling too, dammit. “Now that we’ve gotten  _ that  _ out of the way. What’re you actually doing here, Boyd?”

 

Boyd turned from Kirby, seeming to forget him entirely.

 

“Well I thought about what you said, and I wanted to propose a different target. Turns out this is a community of artists, there’s a recluse by the name of Ind-”

 

“No.”

 

Boyd  _ pouted _ , that was the only word for it.

 

“You never let me have any fun, love.”

 

Ned rolled his eyes, ignoring his heart skipping a beat.

“You have gotta stop picking the scariest people in this town to rob. Not to mention my friend’s boyfriend.”

 

Fake boyfriend? Ned wasn’t entirely certain at this point.

 

Boyd looked something resembling remorseful.

 

“I don’t suppose you could ask him if he’s got anything lying around? He....has a distinctive style that’s very sought after.”

 

“Is it ‘uncannily prophetic’?”

 

Boyd raised an eyebrow.

  
“So you have heard of his work?”

 

“No he’s just.....” Ned realized he’d already said too much, and without any way to end the sentence, he plucked the can from Boyd’s hand and took a swig. 

 

After a moment of silence (in which Ned was wondering how slowly he could chug Boyd’s soda) Kirby cleared his throat.

  
“Well, since you’re....talking about things I would rather not hear about, for legal reasons, I’m just gonna work the front for a while.”

 

Ned handed the empty can back to Boyd, who took it, clearly on autopilot.

 

“Shouldn’t you have been doing that already, friend Kirby?”

 

Kirby snorted.

 

“It’s Tuesday, boss, but sure. Later.”

 

Ned sighed as the door closed.

 

“Anyway. I can ask. He’d be more willing than... Madeline.”

 

“Why d’ya keep pausing like that? What do you call her?”

 

“Mama.”

 

Boyd spluttered, and Ned sighed heavily.

 

“She basically parents like 10 or so 20 somethings, don’t be weird.”

  
“Who’s being weird? Ah, did you seriously drink all- seriously, Ned?”

 

Ned smiled, fleeting, but he was thinking too hard to keep it for long.

 

After another minute of silence, Boyd shifted over on the couch, leaving a spot open for him.

 

“What’s on your mind? You got that look in your eyes again.”

 

Ned sighed, yielding to inertia and old habits, and settled into the couch.

 

“I...got something I have to do.”

 

Ned tried to think of a good lie, but nothing came to mind. He put his face in his hands.

 

“I fucked up, Boyd. I fucked up bad.”

 

After an agonizing couple of seconds, Boyd’s palm pressed to his back. 

 

“Only things that can’t be unfucked are asses.” He said, in the same tone he got when reading off of fortune cookies. Ned wheezed.

 

“What about women?”

 

“What, something changed in the last few years I need to know about?”

 

Ned rubbed his eyes, trying to hide his smile in his hands.

 

“No.”

 

“Well, as wide as my tastes used to run, I made somebody important a promise. And even if you broke yours...well. I suppose we’ve both acted in bad faith.” Boyd was trying for aloof, and it came out soft, especially since Ned could hear Boyd tapping his ring finger against the empty soda can. A little hollow sound when the wedding ring hit it.  

 

Ned didn’t realize he was crying until he heard the sound stop, felt Boyd press against his side.

 

“⬛⬛⬛⬛?”

 

Ned could hardly hear his own name anymore. He hadn’t heard it in so long. He half-thought he’d never hear anyone say it again.

 

“Boyd,” Ned choked out, and Boyd reached out, cupping his cheek in his hand.

 

“You know you don’t have to do this alone, don’t you?”

  
Ned shook his head, pulling away, and forcing himself to be angry so he didn’t let Boyd break his shell.

 

“I’ve been alone since you crashed that goddamn car. Maybe since that fire started.”

 

Boyd’s mouth twisted, his eyes going dark with fury, and Ned felt a sick twist of satisfaction and disappointment. He’d gotten what he wanted.

 

“You can’t seriously think either of those things was my fault-”

 

“I don’t  _ think _ shit. I know two things. I know that house burned down, and I know a woman died. A daughter lost her mother. And I-” Ned cut himself off.  _ I have to look at her every day and remember that it was my fault. Your fault. our- _

 

“Please just....I’ll ask Indrid. About his paintings. I’ll call you. Don’t....Don’t come back here again.”

 

“Ned.”

 

Boyd’s voice was too soft, too familiar, the anger gone again- and Ned wished  _ desperately _ that he’d just sound angry, that he’d just for a moment yell and they could fight and go their separate ways. They could shatter apart so he could start picking up the pieces. 

 

He knew he didn’t mean it.

 

“Just go. Please.”

 

He didn’t mean a word of it.

 

Boyd left.


	19. Best Laid Plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)

Duck was trying not to worry, but Indrid and Stern had been speaking in Italian for  _ quite _ a while. At first the tone had been tense, and Duck hadn’t missed the way Stern gestured and his language got so rapid fire that Indrid had repeated a phrase that was almost certainly  _ please slow down.  _ But Indrid hadn’t seemed alarmed, and so Duck had been content to sit at Indrid’s shoulder, holding his hand and trying to be a physical support. But Indrid had relaxed, and Duck wasn’t feeling terribly useful, so he’d excused himself. He just....needed to take a walk. 

 

Despite how dangerous the woods had become, they had a way of making him feel like he was in control. He knew the paths and every turn in the road.

 

Only...he didn’t today.

 

At first he kept walking, half-certain he was imagining the way the forest smelled different. But the sense of  _ wrongness  _ got heavier, and after a minute or so got impossible to ignore. He stopped.

 

The trees were wrong.

 

It took him a moment to pinpoint why- they weren’t-

 

He looked around.

 

He wasn’t in the deep woods of a national park anymore. The trees were further apart, and in the distance he could see a car trace a road, it’s headlights casting white houses in yellow light. They were big, halfway to mansions, and their colors were...off.

 

Duck followed the car with his eyes, trying to compartmentalize, trying not to panic. He wasn’t in Sylvaine, that was an Imperial Crown Coupe.

 

Duck frowned, watching the black car as it switched off its headlights and continued down the street. It stopped in front of the biggest house, and Duck felt a strange tug in his chest.

 

He stared up at the house and it clicked in his mind’s eye where he’d seen it before. The shadows from the houses behind it and the faint lines of moonlight cast it in graphite streaks and blurred shadows, the night bright with moonlight.

 

A pencilled house on a white page.

 

The only thing that was missing was the smoke.

 

Duck took a deep breath and tried not to panic, but as he watched the passenger door of the car opened, and  _ Ned _ got out- only it couldn’t be Ned, because Ned’s beard was wilder then that, more weight around his stomach.

 

But still, Duck would know Ned anywhere.

 

On the other side of the car a tall man got out, lit for a moment in the warm burn of a cigarette, and Duck recognized him too- from a distance, a silhouette on the street. He’d gotten to Kepler a few weeks back.

 

Only he’d had silvery hair, and the man in the light of the cigarette had hair that was ink black. 

 

Duck had that feeling again- the one he’d gotten in his gut when he’d seen Indrid’s hands shaking holding the drawing. 

 

As if reading his thoughts, the man holding the cigarette looked into the woods. Duck froze, but he didn’t seem to see him. He put out his cigarette and turned to Ned, offering a hand. Ned ignored the offer, wrapping his arms around the man’s neck with the easy familiarity of old lovers and leaning into him. 

 

Duck looked away, feeling suddenly like he was intruding on something private.

 

He didn’t look back till he heard the scuff of shoes on brick, turning in time to see the man with the ink-black hair disappear over the top of the brick wall. 

 

Duck walked up to the wall, cautious.

 

_ Sloppy. Parked the car on the curb. _

 

He jumped, hearing Ned’s voice in his ear, but when he turned there was no one there.

 

_ Still, if we hadn’t, I don’t think either of us would have made it. We were fighting. We wouldn’t have been quiet enough to run. _

 

“Ned?”

 

Duck whispered, and it still felt too loud.

 

_ It was supposed to be in and out. In and out. In and- _

 

The landscape warped around him, and for a moment, Duck saw the woods of the Monongahela around him. He saw Ned walking the trail he’d been following before the woods had changed, and Duck almost moved to reach out, to warn him-

 

But the voice started again, Ned stopped, and Duck....recognized his clothes. He was wearing the bulky paint smock he’d borrowed from Kirby a few days ago, and sporting a splash of blue paint along his cheek he’d gotten working on revamping the cryptonomica.

 

**_This is a memory._ **

 

Ned in the memory stopped reached out and ran his thumb along an old wound in a tree. 

 

_ I’m sorry old friend. I couldn’t get you out of the car. _

 

Despite the change in the scenery, the car was still next to Duck. He could barely see the outline of the house, shadows on shadows, but the car sat next to him, as though it were real. The windows were too tinted to see past.

 

Duck took a deep breath.

 

He got in the car.


	20. Personal Matters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things are gonna be kinda busy tomorrow, so early update! see you guys on tuesday

 

Barclay had a bad feeling, but it didn’t fully rear its head into ugly certainty until an hour passed with no sign of Duck. He’d definitely seen him leave- he hadn’t taken his car, he’d just walked in the woods. Duck had been extra cautious lately, and he’d even taken his helmet with him, but he’d just yelled over his shoulder that he was taking a walk.

 

He should have been back by now. 

 

Fuck.

 

Barclay tried to take a second to figure out where everybody was before he went running out, but in the end, he just went for Aubrey. Indrid would be able to figure out where they were- probably, shit, Duck had mentioned he’d been having trouble with his visions-

 

Aubrey was in Dani’s room, and was on her feet the moment she saw his expression.

  
“What happened?”

 

“Duck hasn’t come back.”

 

She was out the door in another few strides, moving just a little too fast to be natural, and a breeze hit Barclay’s cheek in her wake. 

 

“I gotta get Ned, I don’t think you could get there fast enough-”

 

“Should I get Indrid?”

 

Aubrey shook her head.

  
“He’s talking to Stern. I think his visions cut out soon but for now-”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Barclay tried not to let his gut twist a little bit. Indrid knew who he was, and if he knew who Stern was too....

 

He shook it off. Indrid wasn’t much for intervention in personal matters. 

 

He knew that a little too well.

 

“What should I-” He couldn’t quite get the words out, and for a moment, he felt  _ powerless. _ They were fighting an enemy they hardly knew the shape of, and had absolutely no idea how to kill. If they made it through this it was going to be pure  _ luck. _

 

Thankfully, Aubrey didn’t share his hesitation. She grinned. 

 

“Go kick some ass.”

 

_____

 

Indrid doesn’t know what happened, but one minute he’s arguing with Stern in Italian about the ethics of the FBI’s onboarding process (because Stern has been through some things Indrid wouldn’t wish on his worst enemies, and the man’s trying to  _ thank _ them for it) and the next everything is  _ light. _

 

The future is changing, and it’s trying to impress itself on his senses, but he can’t  _ see _ it. He can taste ash and his lungs feel like they’re filling with smoke. For the first time, he can identify the light, can see the shape of it.

 

It’s fire.

 

There’s light in his eyes, fire in an empty world, except its edges keep shifting and changing, and there are the faint outlines of rooms. He sees a bedroom in shades of gray smoke, the outline of Duck with a blanket around his shoulders throwing himself at the door. He sees a black car in a blur of graphite shooting down a road towards a tree. He sees an FBI interrogation room, Stern sitting in the chair in front of the desk and-

 

And he knows.

 

He forces the images away, forcing himself to sit up from where he’s fallen. Stern’s gotten up, moved to help him, but Indrid pushes him away. 

 

“I need to ask something of you, and if you don’t trust me completely, everything is going to fall apart.”   
  


Stern doesn’t hesitate.

  
“What is it?”


	21. Firestarter

Aubrey knew she wasn’t being as cautious as she should be, but she couldn’t bring herself to care as she grabbed a dirtbike from the front of the lodge (sorry Jake) and went tearing off into town. She shot down the street, ignoring startled shouts and Deputy Dewey very distinctly yelling  _ “Aubrey Little what the HELL-” _

 

She thought maybe she was going to live to regret getting such a distinctive hair color. 

 

Still, she made it to the Crytonomica, flinging herself off the bike and through the door- past Kirby, who choked on his soda as the door slammed open. She headed straight into the back.

 

Ned was only half-up from the couch, having started to rise when he heard the front door, and Aubrey grabbed his hand and hauled him the rest of the way up.

 

“We gotta move.”

 

It takes her a moment to register Ned’s expression, and by the time she has he’s turned around again, wiping his eyes.

 

“I’ll grab the guns.”

 

“Ned, are you-?”

 

“I’m fine. Had a visitor earlier. Don’t wanna talk about it, and even if I did, we wouldn’t have time. Where’s Duck?”

 

Aubrey felt her face crumple, and Ned got his answer.

 

“Is he...?”

 

“I don’t know. He’s just gone.”

 

Ned nodded, shoving his feelings into a box.

 

“Well, we’d better get moving then.”

 

___

 

Boyd was furiously arguing with himself as he watched Ned clamber onto the back of a  _ dirtbike _ behind the twenty-something girl who’d gone sprinting into his shop just as Boyd got into his car. Half an hour ago, Boyd would have assumed Ned was... He didn’t know. It didn’t look good.

 

But he kept remembering the anguish in his husband’s face.

 

_ I got something I have to do. _

 

The bike goes tearing off into the woods, and even from the car Boyd can see that it’s leaving a trail behind it as it goes.

 

And then he heard the sirens coming down the street.

 

He sighed, let out a string of all his favorite swear words, got out of the car, and took off running towards the trail. 

 

Damn  _ Ned fucking Chicane _ for taking away his choices again.

 

Boyd was careful, even though he knew he was well behind them, to move quietly. His attention was on his feet, and so he wasn’t paying attention to the world around him until he noticed the ground had changed- slowly enough that he hadn’t noticed, but the mossbed of the national park woods was now a beaten down footpath. He wondered if he’d gotten close to a campsite, and looked up.

 

It took him a minute to recognize where he was, but when he did his gut twisted.

 

No.

 

No- there was absolutely no way-

 

The house had burned down, and yet there it was, in front of him. As he watched, the first curls of smoke started to come out the windows, and he heard someone scream.

 

No. 

 

Nononono-

 

The gate was open, and before Boyd could even think for another moment about what he was doing, he’d taken off toward the house- sprinting up the walk and through the front door of the house.

 

It swung shut behind him. 


	22. Try me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short one but after things the chapters should be getting much longer once everybody finally enters the radius.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

The car took a moment to form around Duck, but as he closed the door the shadows took shape. For a moment, he couldn’t make out the figures against the shadows, but the voices were clear enough in his ears.

 

“-What the fuck did you  _ do? _ I don’t even know where we are, Boyd! They’re still after us!”

 

Ned’s voice was broken, hoarse from screaming. Duck knew that tone, from bar visits that had ended less than well. (Duck heard that Ned’s first 5 years in Kepler had gone about the same. He’d only caught the tail end.)

 

A streetlight swung by, outside, and for a moment Duck caught a flash of inked arms, hands shaking on the steering wheel.

 

“I didn’t do anything! I swear, babe-”

  
“Don’t give me that  _ shit _ , Boyd! The house was on fucking fire! Don’t fucking lie to me!”

 

“I wouldn’t-”

  
“No, no you don’t get to-”

 

“ _ Babe-” _

 

“What the hell happened?? I can’t believe you when you won’t even tell me what-”

  
The man in the driver's seat let out a strangled, broken sound, and Duck’s gut twisted.

 

“You won’t believe me!”

 

“FUCKING TRY ME.”

 

The car swerved dangerously, and the scene stuttered around Duck. Ned’s voice started from that same strange everywhere and nowhere, conversational, as the voices turned back to screaming and their words to static.

 

_ “He wasn’t wrong. Guess he wasn’t wrong about anything. Still, girl hits her head, the fire just starts. Doesn’t sound...believable. Like magic. _

 

_ What did I say? What was the last straw?” _

 

The landscape flickered back in with crystal clarity, and Duck saw the tree the same time the driver did, felt the sick gut-wrench of the brakes, but he stopped- hanging in the air as the car launched  _ through  _ him and into the tree. 

 

He felt the earth under his feet again as Ned stumbled out of the car.

  
“-Boyd?” 

 

It was almost a whisper, and the sirens in the distance were louder then the tremor in Ned’s voice.

 

Duck didn’t want to see this.

 

Somehow, he already knew how it ended.

 

_ I’m sorry, old friend.  _

 

Duck turned on his heel and walked further into the woods, leaving the sight of Ned pulling things out of the trunk and stuffing them into his pockets behind him.


	23. Within and Without

The air tasted wrong.

 

Even in his human form, Barclay had some advantages over human senses, and as he took off through the woods he could tell, almost immediately, where the radius of the  _ thing  _ was. 

 

He was disturbed by how close to the lodge it had gotten. 

 

There was a shift in the air, like static, and Barclay paused to try to identify the sensation.

 

It was like- when he’s gotten in the radius of what was left of the tree, he had felt it when he got to the edge of what remained of its root system. But the sensation was getting more intense-

 

It clicked a moment too late that he had made some faulty assumptions.

 

He felt the radius move through him, like a wave crashing on shore, and the landscape changed- darkness falling in sheets around him.

 

_ “You got sloppy, Stern.” _

 

The voice cut in before the world did, and Barclay spun, trying to find the shapes in the dark. They settled. He was in a dark room, light coming in through a single tiny window high up on the wall and covered in bars.

 

There was a cold metal table, a neat pile of manilla files, two chairs, a man handcuffed to one and a calm looking officer in a suit in the other.

 

It took Barclay a minute to recognize Stern- eight years younger, bleeding from a cut over his eyebrow.

 

Stern shrugged, the movement a bit jolted- restricted from the handcuffs. The metal hitting the chair made far too loud a sound for the space.

 

_ “Really fucked up this time.” _

 

The officer’s mouth wasn’t moving, and Barclay’s chest twisted as he realized that the voice he was hearing- coming from everywhere and nowhere- was Stern’s.

 

Younger, harsher than the carefully modulated way he phrased his sentences at the lodge. But his.

 

The officer finally spoke.

 

“Your record is exemplary. Apart from the minor...clerical error. At your onboarding.”

 

Stern snorted, and it sounded like he was choking on it.

 

“You mean the fact that I was hired at all? Or that you didn’t get to put my deadname on all your records.”

 

The officer tapped the file with his finger, looking bemused.

 

“I’d say we’re well past that now, so it’s of no consequence. I’m not a bigot, Stern. Other officers in this department would want to smear your record with notes that you were having a love affair with a  _ male _ Russian agent. I really only care about the last two words.”

 

“He wasn’t-”

 

“I’m aware of that too.”

 

Stern looked startled, and despite the fact that Barclay knew he wasn’t  _ really  _ here, he took a step back. The officer’s expression didn’t change- bored. Uninterested. 

 

“We got in. Others in the department were concerned about the fact that there’s a .ru address on the website, but I’m a fan of yours, Stern. I recommended you for the Unexplained Phenomena department. So when we got the site information, I went digging. Victorious, Cold, Leon, B. The four most active users of the Red Data hunters guild. All of them use burner devices, are careful about how they connect, but their posted locations are from all over. Most kills are confirmed in the United States. They’re not Kremlin. I’m well aware of that. But surely you can see how this looks.”

 

“But-”

 

_ Stop talking, Stern. Stop talking. Please, please- _

 

“-If you know that they’re not-”

 

_ Replaying it in your head isn’t going to change how it ends. _

 

The officer’s expressions dipped for a moment, into concern, but Barclay didn’t like the way it looked. 

 

“I don’t want to have to send anyone after them, I can see they’re just doing the same work we do. But we broke into their website, and they’ve gone to ground. I don’t like the way that looks. They don’t want to work for the government, and that means they’ve got their own ends. It’s not for the good of everyone. And you want to help your country, don’t you Stern?”

 

_ Stop stop stop stop- _

 

Barclay’s chest twisted, and he backed against the door as Stern’s posture closed up. He looked very small, for a moment. 

 

The man in the chair’s eyebrows pulled together.

 

“I would have liked to recruit them, but they seem to have  _ left you-” _

 

Barclay turned, reaching out to grab the doorknob, but as he did the room dissolved, and for a moment, it looked like he was back in the woods again. Stern walked past him, not- not  _ his _ Stern, but the older one with the mask for a face, wearing one of his “Friday ties”- a black number with pink and blue hearts. 

 

The same one he’d worn last Friday.

 

Stern twisted, and Barclay froze, but Stern just looked right through him.

 

And then he crossed to a snowbank and kicked it, sending snow splattering across the trees.

 

_ How are you supposed to fight monsters if you can’t even fight the ones inside your head, Stern? _

 

“Stanley.” Barclay couldn’t help it, starting down the path toward him.

 

_ B left you, they all left you. The Bureau might not have been completely honest with you but at least they didn’t- _

 

Stern started down the path again, and Barclay broke into a run, but as he reached out the scene disappeared, and he fell into the dark. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey if you were reading LL? this is where we cut back in with that timeline


	24. Memoria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW for implied gore, implied murder, extreme violence.

Stern thought it was strange, how familiar it was hunting with Indrid. They’d never been like this- Indrid had always just been words on a screen and a voice in his ear. But some things never changed, he supposed.

 

Like how Indrid was still a  _ massive pain in the ass. _

 

“Watch your step.”

 

“I am watching my-” Stern tripped, and he was  _ a hundred percent _ sure Indrid had planned that, because he snickered.

 

“I thought your powers were acting up.”

 

That seemed to throw Indrid off, because he grimaced, stepping a little more carefully on the uneven ground (and he shouldn’t have needed to- he should have known exactly where to put his feet.)

 

“They’re functioning fine up until about-”

 

Indrid paused, turning to Stern. He looked unconcerned, but that didn’t ease Stern’s worry.

 

“Until when?”   
  


“Are you- locked and loaded, as you Americans say?” 

 

Stern snorted.

  
“I’m about as American as you are. You’ve been here longer.”

 

Indrid smiled, and for the first time, Stern believed it was real.

  
“10 seconds.”

 

“What?”

 

“9-”

 

“Indrid-”

 

“8-”

 

Indrid turned on his heel and strode forward. After a few steps, he disappeared. Stern stopped dead, but he kept up the count in his head.

“ _ 3- 2- 1-” _

 

There was a feeling like taking his sweaters out of the drier- all warmth and static and a kind of comfort that made his chest ache- and then it washed over him, and the world changed.

 

He felt the rain on his cheeks before his eyes adjusted.

 

He was standing a city street- but even with the colors washed out by smog and rain, the sidewalks looked-

 

His gut twisted. The sidewalks were red. The water running into the sewer was red. He couldn’t see bodies through the smoke, but there were masses at the edges he didn’t want to think about.

 

A shape moved through the fog.

 

Stern looked up, and his heart caught in his chest. 

 

A huge humanoid form, covered in fur, hunched over. It was curling and uncurling its hands, coated in blood, and it-

 

It was Bigfoot.

 

Stern felt like he was going to be sick, but as he took another step back, something-

 

Someone passed through him, as though he were a mirage- or they were- no more solid then the fog. An older man, broad, holding-

 

Holding-

 

The man lifted his arm, and the sword uncoiled, and Stern recognized the older man’s stance in the way his posture shifted. Words on a screen.  _ My weapon’s a little unconventional, kid, but it gets the job done. _

 

Bigfoot lunged, and Stern couldn’t help but stumble back, but Leo dove forward, swinging the sword in a glimmering arc. It wrapped around the creature’s legs, bringing it down to its knees, and Leo-

 

Leo stopped.

 

Stern was shaking, trying to resist the desire to yell at him to run, but Leo’s posture was casual, unafraid. Like he had all the time in the world, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a necklace.

 

And Stern recognized it- with a sick twist in his gut, because he’d only seen it once, but there was no mistaking it. The chunk of orange crystal glowed- he couldn’t tell if his eyes had been fooling him in the kitchen of the Amnesty Lodge, but in the gray landscape it was like a lantern. A guide.

 

And Leo caught the hand that was swinging at him easily, pressed the pendant into it.

 

The creature relaxed, all at once, like a puppet with its strings cut. It sagged into Leo’s chest, and Leo wrapped an arm around its shoulders, reaching down to pull something else out of his pocket. A hemp bracelet. He tied it carefully around Bigfoot’s huge wrist. 

 

The form flickered- like bad camera footage. Shrank, unsteadily, until there was a teenager sitting where the monster had been. A teenager with brown eyes and the barest beginnings of a beard, his eyes wide and terrified. Familiar shapes. A younger man. 

 

Stern took a step back.

 

_ How young were you? When you got caught up in all this? _

 

The landscape flickered, and he heard the words in his own ears, could feel them flying off his fingers and into his keyboard, in a computer lab on a government base, years ago. They were his.

 

Stern turned.

 

The landscape behind him bled from city sidewalk into wooden floor, and there was the man again, only, he was older now. Sitting on an old computer- a big boxy thing, a relic he remembered a little too well.

 

His fingers moved on the keyboard, and Stern could hear the words as they were typed. That was a voice he knew, too.

 

_ “I kind of grew up in... I guess you could say a community. Really strict rules. I didn’t really follow those rules, and I got the boot when I was 16. Ran with Leo for a while, but you know him.” _

 

The figure at the keyboard turned, as though looking back at the illusory city, and Stern’s chest wrenched.

 

Barclay.

 

B.

 

His heart was going a thousand miles an hour, and he felt like it was going to beat out of his chest. He looked back at the city, saw Barclay at 16 collapsed onto Leo’s shoulders, covered in blood and crying like the world was ending- and Leo, God, Leo  _ Tarkesian _ , Leo from the Kepler grocery store, his family had been here all along and he’d been too fucking stupid to see it.

 

_ Nowadays I hunt solo, which the members of my old community aren’t terribly fond of. They like it better when all their exiles settle in one place and they can keep on watching. _

 

Barclay’s voice filled his ears again, and the landscape broke apart again- a shade, for an instant, of the Amnesty Lodge.

 

The Amnesty Lodge.

  
The  _ Amnesty- _

 

Oh god.

 

Stern thought he was going to be sick.

 

And as though he’d summoned it, a vision of the lodge solidified around him, the city and the bedroom with the old computer gone again. He was in the kitchen at the lodge, and Barclay was sitting on the table, his expression broken. His legs were bandaged, but it was just him and Aubrey in the room.

 

“We....” The Barclay sitting on the table sighed. “We were friends online a really long time ago, but he doesn’t know it’s me, and he can’t know, because things would get complicated if he did.”

 

Aubrey opened her mouth to say something, but when the words came, they were from everywhere and nowhere- Barclay’s voice again.

 

_ The man I love is here to kill me, and I can’t even begin to apologize. _

 

Stern felt like his grief was going to level him.

 

He turned to throw open the lodge door, but it disappeared as he reached for it, and he fell into the dark. 


	25. Judge, Jury, and-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for possible futures- Medical experimentation, violence, murder, the whole bag

When Indrid stepped into the radius, Duck could _feel it._ Something echoed out into the landscape- a call and response- and for a moment, Duck was reassured.

 

And then the landscape spun like a kaleidoscope- bits and pieces of images and memory and thoughts and feelings spinning around him, and he could hear a thousand clips of Indrid’s voice, layered on top of each other in a dizzying blur of sound-

 

_-go looking for friends and you’ll find them._

_-perhaps I could have worded that warning better-_

_-you become a danger to those you love-_

 

Duck slapped his hands over his ears, trying to block out some of the light and the sound, but the words just kept reverberating in his head. He felt like he was falling through space and there was nothing but flashes moving too fast to see and words he could barely make out.

 

- _you are more important than you know-_

_-there are exactly zero futures where I put those damned things on my hands._

_-I’m so sorry, Stanley-_

 

Duck’s knees hit something solid, and he was almost sick with relief when the sounds stopped. He looked up, tentatively.

 

He was in a dark room, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness. The only source of light was a set of tightly closed window shutters with a kind of gray seeping around their corners, and the bright white of a laptop that looked like it had been thrown onto the floor. It’s screen was snapped back- farther than an old model like that should have been able to go. It’s was broken into rainbows at one corner.

 

There was a lump on the bed, and as Duck sat up, he could see that it was an almost familiar silhouette. Indrid- but where his cheeks poked up from under the blanket they looked gaunt, and his glasses were half-off his face.

 

His hair was darker, looking like a fading brown dye job. Duck’s heart wrenched, and he almost stepped towards him, but he caught the flicker of the screen in the corner of his eye.

 

He looked at it.

 

There was an open forum page, a draft open. A message that Duck could tell Indrid wasn’t going to send.

 

_We’ve been compromised. Stanley’s been taken by the FBI. Go to ground. I’m so sorry._

 

As Duck looked at it, an illusory image appeared of it- Indrid hitting send. A group of men in black barging through the door. Fragments of blood and agony as Indrid was pinned to a wall. The back wall of the room turned to images- like a movie screen projection- and for a moment, over Indrid’s curled up body, Duck could see it.

 

He could see laboratories, cold metal tables, Indrid monstrous and screaming. A door was flung open, and a voice that sounded almost familiar yelled something in a language Duck didn’t speak or recognize. (Arabic? maybe?)

 

The monstrous form of Indrid threw himself off the table, shot through the doorway, and the scene dissolved like burning film. The screen on the ground flickered out and the room was plunged back into darkness- lit only by the crystal around Indrid’d neck.

 

Duck stood and took a few hesitant steps forward. He reached out to touch Indrid’s shoulder, not expecting to be able to connect.

 

For half a moment, he felt the soft scratch of cheap motel blanket, and then the scene shifted around him.

 

He was standing in the middle of a marble dais- in a place he almost recognized. He was definitely in Sylvaine, but he’d never seen this particular room before. There were three seats- two occupied by Woodbridge and Vincent on either side.

 

In front of him was Indrid.

 

Indrid was tall, his wings outstretched, and he tipped his head. His expression was hard to make out, but Duck felt the cold chill of fear in his gut. Something was wrong with that look. It was simultaneously piercing and distant- as though summing up someone to judge what the most efficient way to execute them was.

And since this was a courtroom...

 

Indrid spoke.

 

_“For the crime of attempted treason, you are hereby sentenced to exile, effective immediately.”_

 

The room was silent, Woodbridge keeping his head down. Duck felt something- a kind of breeze, but it felt like...whispers. The edges of words, brushing over his skin. He tried to focus on them, but they slipped away, and he lost them again when Vincent spoke, his voice breaking.

 

“Seer Cold, I beg you to reconsider.”

 

Indrid didn’t look away from the platform where Duck was standing.

 

“I will not.”

 

_-.01%, .05%, .5%-_

 

For a moment, the whispers formed words, and it startled him enough to turn around.

 

On the dais behind him, kneeling and in chains, was Barclay.

 

Younger, but unmistakably the bigfoot of old faded photos.

 

As Duck looked at him, the flickers started up again, and the walls of the room turned to different scenes. One, the Amnesty Lodge, hung over Barclay’s head. When Duck stepped back to look at Indrid in the court seat, it was clear that his attention was focused on that one.

 

But around him-

 

_-Bigfoot, feral and running through New York City- the arc of a silver blade-_

_-Barclay, small and human and bleeding out in the middle of a lavender field, a man with a gun standing over him-_

_-the cold metal of the FBI lab, Barclay strapped to the table-_

 

Indrid’s voice from behind him was calm and collected, as though he saw none of it.

 

“There are very few outcomes where Sylvaine persists beyond this tragedy, Minister. We cannot afford to be sentimental.”

 

Duck could no longer hear Indrid’s voice in his head, but somehow, he knew the odds. 98% of futures where Sylvaine is restored begin with Barclay’s exile. He lives in only 40% of them.

 

The man watching this- already planning for the next disaster, the next outcome, the next execution- does not seem to care. The whispers are more intrusive- like a gagged man screaming- and the pressure in Duck’s head is approaching unbearable.

 

No.

 

No, no, no-

 

He turns away from the court, back toward Barclay and the scene hanging over his head.

 

Barclay stands, straightens his back, and Duck-

 

Duck sees the future change.

 

The scene of Amnesty Lodge solidifies, still just a hope, but growing stronger. Barclay smiles, and around him, there are other fragments. A phone call, a man ducking as a black disk shoots above his head. Leo Tarkesian grinning, holding out his hand against a backdrop of trees. A woman Duck almost recognizes- Victoria, the proprietor of the old Cryptonomica. She’s smoking a cigarette and holding a baseball bat, and a phone rings.

 

Duck can feel Indrid on the platform behind him, finally rattled, and realizes that he’s seeing the things that will have to come together for Barclay to _have_ a future.

 

He sees Indrid’s hand in all of them.

 

The images disappear, abruptly, as though someone is trying to wipe them away, but Duck’s agony is giving tentatively away to hope, and as the ground disappears beneath him, he holds his breath and lets himself fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so every audio clip in the first bit is from the prequel, loaded language, EXCEPT "there are exactly zero futures" which is from One Fell Swoop by Scathefireseer, which is fucking WONDERFUL. Her original wording in third person is much better, because unfortunately, there's so way to say "deign" smoothly in first person
> 
> GO READ IT


	26. Destiny's calling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: death! so! much! Death!

Indrid stands alone in the landscape for a moment, but when he breathes, he sees it fog in the air. The white clumps and shapes, and he’s standing in a painting of a snowstorm- white on white on white. There is a sword in the snow.

 

A monster appears, it’s form fuzzy and indistinct, and they’re standing in a snowstorm amidst the trees, and the members of the old Pine Guard are standing back- alive, hardy, whole. Indrid recognizes them from their indistinct shapes- Emory, Basil, Thacker, Franc, Nik. And Madeline yells-

 

“ _ Now, Duck!” _

 

And the sword comes down in a silver arc, and the monster turns to snow.

 

**_Well._ **

 

Indrid can hear Duck’s voice now, but it’s not coming from anywhere- it is simply there, as much a part of the landscape as anything else.

**_I didn’t like that shit one bit._ **

 

The landscape gets brighter, fading to white like the snow storm concluding, and then getting brighter, and brighter- and a figure in radiant blue steps out of the light. 

 

“DUCK NEWTON.” she calls, her voice booming in the emptiness.

 

“WHY DO YOU RUN FROM YOUR DESTINY?”

 

And Duck isn’t  _ here,  _ isn’t present in the space Indrid finds himself in, but his voice whispers along Indrid’s skin, and from far away a younger man says-

 

“ _ I got- I got work tomorrow, Minnie.” _

 

The figure in blue spreads her arms, and for a moment Indrid can see her features, tight, stressed. She looks tired. The landscape shifts, blurs, and through the blinding light Indrid can see ruins, fragments of fallen buildings. 

 

“YOU COULD STOP THIS, DUCK NEWTON. YOU COULD SAVE THEM, YOU ARE THE-”

 

_ “I know you think I’m- that I’m special, okay? But I’m not. I can’t- I dropped outta college, Minnie, and I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep- I can’t keep seeing these things, I’m just your average run of the mill fuck-up, and I need you to leave.” _

 

“Leave?” 

 

Indrid sees the landscape again, solidly. The buildings around the woman speaking are-....strange. Some are war-torn, but many stand as though one day everyone in them ceased to exist. There’s an unbroken vase in a window on the side of the street. The woman stands in front of a hulking machine and her face twists. She is utterly alone.

 

“Duck-”

 

_ “I’m sorry. I’m not your chosen one. I’m just- I’m just a park ranger, okay? Leave me alone.” _

 

Indrid sees her reach out and touch the machine, and the landscape fades again.

 

He feels like he’s going to be sick as the details sink into his head. An abomination- a black shape in a stand of trees, the last time all of those figures were alive. 2001.

 

He thought he’d live to regret appreciating Duck’s steadfastness, but he didn’t think that this would be how.

 

Indrid’s not sure if he wants to laugh or cry, and settles for sinking to his knees, giving into gravity. He’s been holding himself too tight and the joints of his legs are punishing him. He presses his thumb into his knee, tries to ignore the dizzying sensation of the abomination sending up another memory. 

 

Duck Newton’s low self esteem has a body count.

 

Indrid lifts his head, and he can feel the abomination ripping the memory out of him. No- nonono-

 

An ugly wall of black slime shoots a tendril out, slams a man in a bright green jacket to the ground. Indrid watches, paralyzed, as he thrashes, getting weaker with each kick. An older man in a brown leather jacket rushes forward to try and help, sinks his arms into the goo up to the elbows and pulls, but the moment he makes contact he starts to die, too.

 

Indrid remembers this part. He wished he didn’t- didn’t remember their faces, their names, their lives- their deaths. In his dreams he always tries to stop them- tries to save Basil by stopping him from going after Emory. It never works. Indrid thinks that maybe he and Basil would have gotten along if they’d ever spoken. The timelines where it occured mostly involved his Winnebago being looted extensively, but still. He was a competent criminal. 

 

He was a good man.

 

He died an old man, and still, too young. Indrid tries not to think about Emory- mid 20s, lying about his age so smoothly that not even Indrid was sure what the real number was. Emory, who told the worst jokes Indrid had ever heard, bad enough that he kept a notebook full of them to remind him how brightly humans could live, how much their words mattered.

 

Indrid wanted to believe that Emory could have lived a longer life, a brighter one, but he couldn’t- because there had been no timeline where Emory made it past this day. There had been no outcome where any of them celebrated the New Year of 2002, except Franc- bleeding and shooting the thing and screaming (no timelines where she didn’t lose her mind, no way she saw them die and came out of it whole on the other side), Thacker (gone too, his will too set, his conviction steel, once)- and Mama.

 

Madeline Cobb ran by him, yelling out a warning that disappeared into an empty blur of sound, and Indrid saw another limb of the thing shoot out at the last heavily tattooed figure. 

 

Nik turned towards him, and Indrid saw the desperation in their face, and then they were gone, too.

 

And he sees Nik die- sees the monster pick them up and throw them like so much refuse, the person who had an hour before been asking if they were sure it wasn’t sentient, didn’t have feelings, couldn’t be reasoned with.  _ Stop stop stop- _ He presses his palms into his eyes, forces the memory away, wrenches it free from the grips of the  _ thing,  _ but it’s too late, because he knows. He knows, and they’re still dead, and there’s nothing either of them can do about it now.

 

He almost laughs, but it gets caught in his throat, and he chokes on it, curls in on himself. The abomination spins around him, but he can’t seem to make himself move. 


	27. Drive

Ned almost forgets, for a moment, about the monster.

 

Because they enter the radius- and for a moment he’s on a dirtbike hurtling through the trees, holding awkwardly onto Aubrey, and the next-

 

The next he’s on the back of Boyd’s motorcycle, with his arms around his husband’s waist. They’re on a seaside highway, and the wind is curling Ned’s hair around his ears as Boyd hugs the turns and sings along with the radio, mostly to himself-

 

_ “ _ _ And California never felt like home to me _

_ Until I had you on the open road and I was singing-” _

 

Ned almost started when Boyd cut himself off, laughing.

 

“Come on love, at least hum along.”

 

Ned doesn’t know what to do- for a moment, he feels like the last decade’s been nothing but a bad dream, and he’s just fallen asleep holding Boyd, again.

 

He hums.

 

And Boyd’s just singing- Ned can feel the vibrations where his chest is pressed to Boyd’s back, the roll of his hum, but suddenly, Ned can hear Boyd’s voice echoing around them.

 

_ I think right then I would have done anything for him. _

 

“Boyd-?”

 

The moment Ned speaks, the memory breaks, and he falls back off the motorcycle as it drives on without him, a shadow of himself still riding on the back. The highway disappears, and Ned’s standing in a tile bathroom. There’s a skinny boy sitting on the counter, a girl with curly hair wearing blue next to him- on his other side is a girl who’s a spitting image of the first one, only she’s wearing green.

  
They’re both pouting at him.

 

“C’mon Boyd.” says the one in blue.

 

“It’s only eyeliner.” Finishes the one in green.

 

“-We promise we’re not making fun of you-”

 

“-we just wanna practice!”

 

Boyd sighs, dramatically, but Ned realizes he recognizes the little twist at the corner of his lips. It’s the same one he gets- got. Got. when Ned convinced him to do something he’d already wanted to do. 

 

He always yielded overdramatically, like it was some great trial, but Ned always broke him down eventually.

 

“Fiinnneee, just this once.”

 

“Thank you!!” squealed the one in blue, hopping off the counter.

 

The scene shifted- the same strange sense of shifting place Ned had gotten when he’d entered the memory the first time. Boyd was sitting on the counter again, only he was pimpley, in his mid teens. The girls standing next to him were older, young adults, and The girl in the blue was wearing a blouse and a skirt. The other was wearing a green frog t-shirt and black leggings.

 

“C’mon Boyd, shouldn’t you know how to do this by now?”

 

Boyd shrugged, and the girl in green smacked him as she carefully traced the arc of his eyelid with the pencil.

 

“Just don’t have steady hands.”

 

“You’re wearing gloves. Did you get in another fight?”

  
“No.” Boyd lied easily, but Ned heard the edge of it, and the two girls sighed as one.

 

“You don’t have to lie to us. We’re not gonna tell mom. What’d they do?”

 

“That’s for me to know and you to never find out.”

 

Ned almost laughed when Boyd’s voice rang out, caught off guard for a moment by what must have been Boyd’s thoughts-  _ “If any of those fuckers so much as say one of my sisters names again i’m going to rip their fucking tongues out.” _

 

The landscape flickers, and Boyd’s sisters disappear, and Ned’s looking at himself. He’s wearing a white suit he bought at a thrift store, and walking down a tacky rose-print carpet towards Boyd and an Elvis impersonator.

 

Boyd smiles, his eyes on Ned like he’s the only thing that matters. The memory’s perfectly clear, and Ned remembers both of them pretending to be hungover the next morning.

 

They hadn’t taken the rings off.

 

Ned rubbed his ring finger, the silver band still on it.

 

Gold would have been too conspicuous.

 

They’d always been  _ practical.  _

 

_ Is he going to regret this tomorrow? No- don’t start. Just take it in now, Boyd. You’re marrying the man you love. _

 

_ It’s enough.  _

 

Was it?

 

Ned thought that it hadn’t been.

 

He couldn’t move. He watched their wedding, the stupid fucking elvis impersonator, the rings they’d fit each other for as they slept. Their happy ever after.

 

The one he’d fucked up.

 


	28. Refusing the outcome

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in light of....things i'm not going to talk about.
> 
> here's boyd!

Boyd went through the door, and found himself somewhere else.

 

The burning house was gone, and so was the smell of smoke. The door he’d come through was open, but when he turned to look through it it led into a comfortable hotel lobby with an arched ceiling, a woman sitting at a piano, a few other people spread out on couches and chairs. It was warm, and sleepy, and a breeze wound around him that he felt more as a pressure on his skin then he should have.

 

It didn’t move his hair. It wasn’t quite right.

 

He took a few hesitant steps forward, and stopped dead as he spotted the girl in front of him. 

 

She had a bright red pompadour, now, but everything else about her looked exactly the same as the last time he’d seen her, sitting in a courtroom with her chin up and her head held high. He’d regretted the fire more in that moment then any other before or since- had thought he’d give anything, anyone, to take it back.

 

The girl in that room was steel, and strong, and he understood her strength better than she knew. He’d wished he could have talked to her, pulled her aside and apologized, and they could have gotten through it, answered why the fire happened, why it all went so wrong. He thought she would have understood.

 

Or maybe she would have killed him. He’d have accepted either outcome.

 

“Aubrey-” He started.

 

She looked up, but her eyes didn’t land on him, they went right through him, and she smiled. Boyd felt an odd shift, like a chill, and a blonde woman passed  _ through  _ him as she came out the door, and his hand went to his chest, trying to-

 

_ Dani. _

 

He could see Aubrey Little’s lips move, but when he heard the word, it came from somewhere else- all around him.

 

The girl with the blonde hair sat down next to Aubrey, dangling her bare feet in the water and resting her head on Aubrey’s shoulder. Aubrey’s voice rang out of space around him.

 

_ I think this is the first time in a long time that everything’s just been....fine. Better then fine. I’m here and so is she and- _

 

“Aubrey, baby, are you okay?” The girl with the blonde hair (Dani? It must have been Dani) startled Aubrey- and Boyd- out of her thoughts, propped her chin up on Aubrey’s shoulder.

 

Aubrey smiled, turning her head and pressing her lips to Dani’s forehead.

 

“Yeah I just....think too much sometimes.”

 

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

 

Aubrey sighed dramatically, flopping over onto her back and kicking up spring water. Despite himself, Boyd smiled.

 

She was acting just like his sisters.

 

“I dunno-”

 

Dani flopped dramatically across Aubrey’s shoulder, and Aubrey curled to the side, tangling their ankles and arms together. 

 

Boyd felt as though this should be awkward- he should feel like he’s intruding. But as he watched, all he felt was the comfort of the scene, a sense of love and familiarity he could taste in the air.

 

“It just feels weird to be happy. Like I didn’t earn this, I guess? I dunno, ever since I-”

 

She trailed off, and Boyd stiffened as the voice cut in from all around him again.

 

_ Since I realized that I was the one who killed mom. _

 

Boyd flinched, hard, and the house is suddenly around him again- there’s a girl at the end of the hallway, and she came running out into the hall.

 

Her hair’s dark, tied up in a loose ponytail, and as she rounded the corner her foot caught the edge of the carpet and she falls.

 

Boyd felt himself do the same thing again- even though he knows how this ends- even though he knows it won’t make a difference, he lunged forward to try to catch her, but her head hit the corner of a hall cabinet with a hard  _ crack _ .

 

And as she landed, fire starts climbing the wall, and Boyd fell-

 

He fell, and he landed in a seething body of water that flings him back again, and he felt his hands get purchase on the rough stone of the edge, and pulled himself out.

 

Around him, it looked like a storm has come through, or is still going on. There are pipes wrenches open, pool chairs smashed to pieces. There’s Aubrey, in front of him again, her hands are up and she’s screaming, but he can’t hear the words. She’s looking up, and Boyd followed her gaze, and-

 

And he can’t quite wrap his head around what he’s seeing.

 

He’s had a lot of time, in prison, to get used to the idea that magic is real. That the world is bigger than he thought it was. He’d spent the first few years trying to lie to himself, but it always bubbled back up.

 

That fire hadn’t started naturally.

 

But as he looked up, at a wall of water lifting above his head from a pool, coiling and writhing like an angry snake, it still terrifies him. And then he saw Ned.

 

Ned was  _ inside the thing _ .

 

And Boyd knew it wasn’t real, knew he couldn’t do anything about it, knew he couldn’t stop it. He started to run towards it anyway, but as he moves, Ned lifts a nerf gun- he’s seen that gun, it was in the back room when Boyd had crashed the Cryptonomica.

 

Ned pulled the trigger.

 

Something flies out of the end, a streak of light, and there shouldn’t be anything to aim at, but something must get hit, because Boyd heard the thing  _ scream _ , and then Ned’s falling, and Boyd’s lunging to catch him, and-

 

And he hits solid ground, the wooden floor of a lobby. He looked up, and Aubrey was in front of him again, on a rough stage. She’s smiling, but it looks tenuous, and he heard her voice in his ears again-

 

_ Oh please like me, oh please, oh please- _

 

And then she reached into her hat, and pulled out a rabbit, hefting him onto her shoulder.

 

“And this is my assistant, the master, the doctor- Harris Bonkers PHD!”   
  


Even feeling as though he were trapped in a nightmare, his brain rushing to catch up to the present, Boyd laughed.

 

Aubrey’s smiling, proud, and there’s a smattering of applause.

 

She held out a handful of cards, unfurling them with a little flash of sparks Boyd’s familiar with- spark gloves. Sleight of hand.

 

She grinned even wider, and there’s a kind of ferocity in her joy that’s familiar to Boyd, and something shifted in Boyd’s chest.

 

He’s proud of her- the girl in front of him, with the red hair and the scuffs in her jeans. She’s older than the one in the house who fell- and, he’s somehow certain, younger then the one tangled in the grass with her girlfriend.

 

She doesn’t have the answers yet, but she’s seeking them.

 

He got off the ground.

 

He was going to to do the same.


	29. Shatter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cw: emetephobia, drugging, bar fights, homophobia

Aubrey felt herself fall forward, the dirtbike disappearing from underneath her, and she hit the ground hand. 

 

For half a second, everything was white, and then a wooden floor formed underneath her. When she looked up, she was in a dive bar- not the hornet’s nest, so she wasn’t in Kepler.

 

It had a southern theme- some flags on the walls that made her annoyed immediately. There was something about the air.

 

What had Duck said? Memories?

 

This one tasted like a fight about to happen, a tension like a bowstring. Who-

 

Ned.

 

She snorted, involuntarily, as she got up. Of course it was Ned. He looked younger, his beard shorter and better kept, but it was him. He was grinning- it wasn’t a look she’d seen on him before, but she recognized it. She’d seen a fight or two, in between small towns and scraping out a living performing at bars (she tried not to do that anymore, it got dangerous). It was the look of a man who knew he was going to come out on top.

 

Aubrey wasn’t so confident, looking at the other guys in the bar, several of which were glaring at Ned. Big. Tattoos. Leather jackets.

 

“Got a problem?” His voice was more confident then Aubrey had ever heard it- she was used to the shake in her bravado when he got into trouble. Even the roll of his stage presentation felt like a front. 

 

Everyone knew that you’d never be able to tell when Ned Chicane was lying, because he always sounded like he was lying.

 

This time, his confidence didn’t seem like a front.

  
“Might have one,” One of the guys (he was covered in American flag patches, as if that didn’t say anything about him) spoke up, jutting out his chin. “If you and your boy toy don’t get packing.”

 

Aubrey felt her hands spark and-

 

And then go out.

 

She looked down, startled. Snapped her fingers. Nothing. That was....probably bad.

 

A door slammed open, and Aubrey was startled into looking up, and a man stepped into the room.

 

She froze.

 

Boyd Mosche looked younger, cleaner, less haggard then he had in the courtroom when he’d sat behind his lawyer and mostly kept his mouth shut until the very end, when he’d stood, and in a broken voice, apologized.

 

He’d sat back down, and he’d gone quietly. The only point at which he had seemed at all upset was when they’d brought up the one spot on his record- a bar fight.

 

“You were arrested alongside one Ferdinand Madonna, whose name we can no longer turn up in any records. You insist that you did not have a partner-”

 

“I didn’t.” Boyd had spat the words, and then seemed to catch himself and forced a smile. “I would rather not discuss my past relationships, if it’s all the same.”

 

Aubrey, despite the circumstances, had been scared, in that moment. She wanted him to go to jail for what he did, not who he was. 

 

And just once, for the only time in the trial, they’d made eye contact. And one corner of his lips had lifted, like a secret between the two of them. 

 

The point was dropped. The trial went on.

 

The Boyd in the memory crossed the bar to Ned, threw an arm around him, and leaned into his side with the easy familiarity of old lovers.

 

“Ferdinand, dear. Are these boys giving you trouble?”

 

“Oh i’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.” Ned batted his eyelashes, and Aubrey was startled into laughing. She had an odd feeling, like watching her parents flirt, underneath the twisting chaos in her chest.

 

And that thought almost hurt worse, but she didn’t have a chance to let it, because that was the moment when the man in the leather jacket started toward them, and Boyd grabbed a bottle off the bar and flung it full force into the man’s face, and then everything went to hell.

 

Aubrey had to move out of the way, because people were passing through her, and it felt like an odd chill. She hopped the bar- noting the sensation of cold granite under her hands as she did, and for a moment, just- watched.

 

Boyd was standing in front of Ned, fighting three guys at once as Ned ducked behind him, dodging hits and occasionally grabbing a glass off the counter to fling into someone’s face. 

 

They were both laughing, and the sirens started as one of the men booked it out the door, and Boyd flung another one into the wall.

 

“Well,” Boyd said, a face full of blood. “That could have gone better, love.”

 

Ned laughed, holding up a couple of wallets fanned out in his palm.

 

“For you, maybe. Wipe your face, I don’t wanna kiss you when you’re covered in blood.”

 

Boyd got a twinkle in his eye, and his arms shot around Ned, and Ned’s loud, ringing laugh twisted Aubrey’s chest, but she couldn’t seem to look away as Boyd leaned in and pressed a bloody kiss to Ned’s forehead, holding him tight.

 

She felt frozen to the ground, but it was starting to feel like she was intruding, so she forced herself to turn and walk- back toward the door the bartender came through.

 

She pushed it open, and as she stepped through the ground shifted underneath her, and she barely kept her footing.

 

She was-

 

She was on a yacht. She turned around, not surprised to find that the door behind her led back into the ship.

 

She took a deep breath, trying to process, but was thrown off but the sight of a blonde woman plopping herself down on Boyd’s knee, where he was sitting on in lounge chair on the deck.

 

“You motherfuck-” Aubrey cut herself off as Boyd spoke.

 

“I thought you ought to ask both our husbands if they’re alright with sharing.”

 

Aubrey fist pumped, and immediately felt bad for assuming he’d been cheating in the first place.

 

And then it clicked.

 

_ “Husband?” _

 

On cue, the door behind her opened, and she stepped out of the way as Ned came up the stairs, holding a few glasses of something that had to be alcoholic. Ned raised an eyebrow, but didn’t pause as he crossed to Boyd and handed him a glass.

 

“Have our plans for the evening changed in a way I ought to be aware of?”

 

The blonde woman tittered, grabbing the other glass from Ned’s hand. “Oh no, I was just looking for a more comfortable chair.”

 

She took a huge swig of the glass, and as she did, Aubrey could see Ned’s smile turn into something a bit cruel. Boyd raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t get a chance to get any clarification before the woman went green.

 

“Oh that- doesn’t agree with-”

  
“Oh, no! Maybe one glass too many, Miranda?” 

 

Miranda bent double as Ned spoke, and Boyd shot Ned a decidedly displeased look and mouthed  _ really. _

 

Ned batted his eyelashes, and then Miranda-

 

Miranda threw up on Boyd’s feet, and as she did, Ned reached down and patted her back with one hand, and unclipped her necklace with the other- so fast Aubrey wouldn’t have seen it if she hadn’t been looking.

 

_ Serves her fucking right for hitting on other people’s husbands. _

 

Aubrey started, nearly falling as Ned’s voice sounded from somewhere she couldn’t see. 

“Ned?” She tried.

 

“Let’s get you back  to your husband, Miranda.” Boyd helped Miranda up, and as he did, Aubrey saw one of her bracelets slip off her wrist and disappear into Boyd’s pocket.

 

_ I think this is the first time we used that line on a con. Before Vegas. Before any of it. Just the two of us, falling in love like idiots. _

 

“Ned-” Aubrey twisted, looking for the source of Ned’s voice, but as she did, another wave hit the yacht. She’d backed too close to the rail, and as the boat moved her feet went out from underneath her.

 

Her gut flipped.

 

She fell.


	30. Gaslight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: emotional abuse, verbal abuse, gaslighting, death threats, PTSD, PTSD symptoms.

Barclay fell into a scene he almost recognized from a kill report on a forum, a long time ago. 

 

August 9th, 2.28am, 2010. Moscow, Russia. Black Volga, killed by U.S.S.Truthseeker.

 

The last kill before everything went wrong.

 

Barclay was standing in the middle of the street, the night quiet around him, and in front of him was Stanley Stern, firing a magnum at a driverless black car that slammed on its brakes, attempting to turn. Stern pulled out a grenade, stuffed his phone into his pocket, and pulled out the pin with his teeth.

 

_ If I make it out of this alive, I’m going to tell B that I’m in love with him. _

 

“Promises promises.” Barclay muttered to himself, and then wrenched himself away from the scene, heading down an alleyway. This wasn’t helping. He had to get through this, there had to be some break in the memories-

 

He heard the explosion go off behind him, smiled despite himself at the loud whoop of joy that immediately followed it. He remembered the texts from the next day.  _ “Turns out i’m a badass!” _ What happened to that man, he wondered. The one who got giddy like a little kid over killing monsters. Fiercely competent, but always lighthearted about it.

 

He realized his mistake as he saw his own mental images flicker around him, Stern on the steps of the lodge, Stern’s hollow look when he’d screwed up Barclay’s bandages, the barely restrained edge of hysteria on Stern’s face before he sprinted out into town after the sinkhole.

 

Cautious, Barclay reached up to try to touch one of the flickers, but they disappeared again, and he stepped out of a Moscow alley and into a dim shooting range with textured metal floors. The sound of the weapon firing was muffled, the way it must have been in Stern’s memories. And there he was, on the end, as though trying to hide out of sight. 

 

All his shots landed center, a loose cluster around the head and heart.

 

Barclay could hear Stern’s breathing, only the tiniest bit shaky, and then the click of heels on the floor. He turned, and in his peripheral vision, he could see Stern do the same.

 

A severe looking older woman in practical shoes crossed the room, not pausing at being noticed, and pulled off Stern’s ear protection.

 

“It’s 2am.”

 

“I’m sorry, Agent Morgan, I-”

 

“You have logged hours at the range from 1 to 4am three nights in a row.”

 

“That’s-” Barclay couldn’t see from where he was standing what the expression on Agent Morgan’s face was, but Stern  _ wilted.  _ “-that’s correct, Ma’am.”

 

“Have you slept?”

 

“No Ma’am.”

 

“Come with me.”

 

Stern followed without protest, and Barclay hurried to catch up without even thinking about what he was doing.

 

“I noticed on your schedule that you’ve been seeing Agent Saul regularly.”

 

“...yes. Retraining.”

  
“Hm. and how has that been?”

 

Stern stumbled, almost imperceptibly in the dim of the hallway. Along the walls, ghostly fragments of other memories flicker- metal desks, empty rooms, stone walls. Voices layer on top of each other  _ -leftyoudisapearedyourfamilyisgonewe’reallyouhavenowthisisallyouhavenowagentsternyoudon’tgetanameyougetanumberthisisall- _

Agent Morgan hummed, breaking through the fog like a lighthouse beam from the shore.

 

“We’re ending those.”

 

“-What? But-”

 

“How long have you been in this division, Stanley?”

 

Stern  _ flinched _ , and Barclay’s heart felt like it was shredding.  _ Youdon’tgetanameyoudon’tget- _

 

“Answer the question.”

 

“Two years, Ma’am.”

 

“Morgan.”

 

“What?”

 

“Call me Morgan. I’m going to call you Stanley. Consider it a different kind of retraining. You’re going to be in my unit from here on. You’ll be having mandatory sessions with Agent Cheryl-”

 

“-With all due respect, Agen-”

 

“Morgan.”

 

“Ah, Morgan, I don’t need-”

 

“Psychological counseling is a part of normal operations here in the Unexplained Phenomena division, Stanley. Every active agent goes twice a week, except those on probation. Consider your probationary period over. I understand that Cheryl was on retainer for the embassy in the Czech Republic? You’ve spoken with her before?”

 

“...yes.”

 

Barclay saw, for a moment, a woman with warm skin the color of polished sandalwood, with bright red hair. She wore glasses and smiled patiently, and Barclay heard her say  _ are you certain there’s nothing you’re not telling me? _ And almost smiled.

 

“Even easier.”

 

Barclay tastes bile when he hears Stern’s voice again, sees the doubt in the set of his shoulders.

 

_ She’s protecting me. I don’t deserve it. _

 

For a moment, the figures of Stern and Morgan disappear completely, and Barclay sees another man in a severe suit, a medal of honor on his chest. He’s frowning like it’s the natural set of his expression, but there’s an ugly gleam in his eye that Barclay doesn’t like. It’s the look of a man who kills for sport.

 

_ “Taking you in was an act of generosity, Stern, if it had been up to me you would have been taken care of a long time ago. You are a threat. And as long as you are, you’re living on borrowed time, do you-” _

 

“-understand, Stanley?”

 

“Huh?”

 

The man flickers out, like a candle being extinguished. They’re sitting in a dimly lit kitchen, and there’s a half-finished mug of hot chocolate in front of Stern. Agent Morgan’s jacket is off, tossed casually over the back of her chair.

 

“Stanley,” she asks, gently. “Do you remember how we got here?”

 

There’s a voice garbled to noise, but it’s the same baritone of the man in the medals, and Stern covers his ears. His voice gets smaller.

 

“No.” he manages. “I don’t.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Agent Morgan is a GIFT and belongs to Grace, who is https://aubreylittlee.tumblr.com/. Stern needed somebody in his corner
> 
> Cheryl is the joint effort of VigilantShadow and I, though I'm almost dead certain the original credit is theirs.


	31. Legacy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is sad again, i'm sorry. it's also a day late! woops!
> 
> TW: minor (canonical)character death, if you haven't read LL it probably won't fuck you up terribly, but if you have, I'm so FUCKING sorry

For a while, Stern keeps falling, but then his sense of the space changes. He feels words in his head, sees blurs that might be messages- sent and deleted, a flurry of paper and thought and word.

 

_ Dear stanley- _

 

_ Stanley I- _

 

_ Everything’s been such a mess the last few years and I don’t know how to tell you the truth. _

 

_ Stanley, I’m bigfoot. I’m upset about your assignment because I’m bigfoot. _

 

_ I don’t know how to tell you that you’re going to be hunting me, could be hunting my family. _

 

_ Please don’t- _

 

_ I don’t know how to ask you to give this up- _

 

_ I don’t know if I should. _

 

_ Stanley, I’m so sorry. _

 

_ I’m so, so sorry. _

 

**Message sending failed: invalid recipient**

 

Stern hits the ground.

 

For a second, he thinks whatever monster’s had him has released him- he’s in the woods, and the ground feels real under his feet. But when he looks forward, there’s...

 

His gut twists.

 

It’s the Cryptonomica, only the colors are duller, no-nonsense shades of brown and white. He’s sitting behind it, in the trees, and on the back porch are Barclay and Leo, dressed in black. 

 

“Is this really what she wanted?” Barclay asks, his voice breaking. “To leave this place to a stranger?”

 

“She didn’t know.” Leo’s voice is subdued, but he’s wrapping his arms around himself, like he needs to be held.

 

“Why didn’t you tell her, then?” Barclay turns on Leo, his voice breaking, and his grip on the railing shatters it, and he curses, holding his hand.

 

Leo reaches out, seemingly unbothered by the outburst, and takes Barclay’s wrist, inspecting where the splinters have dug into his palm.

 

“Her living here was her secret, and who you are was yours, and I just...thought I was protecting you both. I think maybe I was wrong.”

 

All the anger seems to go out of Barclay all at once, and he drops his head into Leo’s shoulder.

 

_ I wish I could have met her. Victorious. Victoria. _

 

Leo seems to hear it too- the thought, the unspoken pain, and wraps an arm around Barclay.

 

“She would have loved you.”

 

_ She was like a mother to me, and to all of us, for years, and I didn’t get to be there. I didn’t get to see her life, or meet her kids, or be with her when she died. _

 

_ Why’d you have to keep so many goddamn secrets, Victoria? _

 

Stern feels the bottom of his stomach drop out.

 

No.

 

No, no, no- this wasn’t right, this couldn’t be-

 

The landscape shifts, and Stern sees a funeral. Leo is crying, Barclay on his other side. Ned stands at a microphone, looking like someone had hit him with a bus. As he spoke, Stern felt an odd tug. The scene shifts, imperceptible, something essential changing. 

 

Like a different camera lens of the same moment. 

 

“I didn’t know Victoria as well, or as long, as I would have like to-”

 

And the voice that echoed out of the emptiness is  _ Ned’s _ . 

 

_ Didn’t know her at all, she kept too many goddamn secrets. She smiled at me like I was an idiot, and that was just fine, because she’d trust me anyway. _

 

_ Still don’t know what the hell she was trusting me with. _

 

And Stern knew, suddenly, what it was. What Ned hadn’t known, couldn’t have known. The Cryptonomica. The culmination of her years of hunting, her years of research, laminated and sprinkled with a gold nuggets of truth so that the casual observer would see and remember, out of the blue, that steel worked on some creatures and not others, that salt was always handy to have in a pinch, that iron knives were just as good as a gun sometimes.

 

Not to invite in strangers. To be safe rather than sorry.

 

Her legacy. A little bit of safety in a dangerous world. A little bit of advance warning.

 

And Stern saw the Cryptonomica in his mind’s eye, and he steeled himself, turned on his heel, and walked out of her funeral.

 

_ Victoria.  _ He called out into the landscape, and it answered.

 

There was the door of the Cryptonomica in front of him, and he threw it open.


	32. Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw: implied/referenced torture, medical experimentation, murder, death

Duck was back in the motel room, with the broken computer and Indrid laying on the bed, only now, all four walls gave way to different scenes, like projector screens- flicking too fast for Duck to get a good sense of what they held. One of them, behind the bed, had the same scenes- Men in uniforms kicking down hotel doors and capturing Indrid. In some, he tried to fight back. Many of those ended with gunshots, the scene abruptly changing to the next one.

 

Game over.

 

Duck turned to the other wall, took a deep breath, and reached out to touch it. 

 

The potential future fell around him in sepia.

 

He saw Indrid on a phone, flicking in and out of color. The future shifted- a body fell, rewound so that the person was alive again and holding a cell phone, and then fell again as Indrid’s hands didn’t move.

 

_ I can’t do this. _ Indrid’s voice was desperate, ringing in Duck’s head.

 

Duck saw, all around him, people dying with a phone in their hands, or killed in the woods by monsters, or Indrid’s body as he threw himself in front of a massive bull-horned creature, and the man he was trying to protect fumbling with a sidearm, shooting indrid in the back.

 

_ I can’t do this. I know how this ends, how it’s always ended, and I can’t- _

 

Duck saw a bridge collapse, from the shore of a river, the cars falling, in technicolor. Not a potential. The past- a string of calls and attempts that ended in nothing. Look out, look out, look out-

 

Duck stepped back again, looked at the other walls.

 

In each one was a computer, a phone, a dial. In each of them, Indrid didn’t send a message, and someone died.

 

For a moment, Duck felt the bile rise in his throat, but then he looked back at the wall with indrid getting captured.

 

He had an awful suspicion.

 

He took a deep breath, reached out-

 

Sepia tones. Messages sent. Blood.

 

The memory closed around his hand, pulling him forward into it, and he was in a cold room, his breath fogging, and Indrid was strapped to the table in his human form. Duck clenched his teeth as he saw the wounds on Indrid’s arms- ugly black stitches on his side where the shirt he was wearing was pulled up. Worse, in places Duck wasn’t willing to look.

 

There was a severe looking man in a jacket covered in medals on one side of the table, scowling. He’s not looking at Indrid, as though the table is beneath his regard, and all his attention is focused like a knife’s blade on the other man in the room. His jaw is set like he’s a moment away from snapping.

 

The other man is wearing a suit, his posture a loose contrast to the military severity of his companion. He’s looking down at the table, but it’s detached, like he’s thinking about what to have for dinner. 

 

“He’s not talking, and as long as he’s still breathing, there’s a risk of him escaping, or someone coming to look for him.” The man in the medals had a voice like gravel, but some part of Duck wanted to straighten, like he was in a police line-up. 

 

“I’ll break him. No need to worry about that, Saul.” The man in the suit’s tone was lazy, flippant, but his eyes never left Indrid. The other man’s face went red, a vein bulging in his forehead.

 

“That’s Sergeant or  _ Agent _ Saul to you, Agent Dervish _.” _

 

“I asked you to call me Lawrence, darling, but that’s hardly the point.”

 

“You-”

 

“Look.  _ Agent _   Saul. He’s a valuable asset, dead or alive. I need more time to collect information on his functions, human and otherwise. I trust you to do your job and keep the threats outside the base. And besides, no one’s coming for him.”

  
“What makes you think that?”   
  


The man grinned, a glint in his eye.

 

“Call it intuition.”

 

_ Nothing left to fight for. No one coming. No point. That’s where I end up if I try again. I can keep running a while. It ends the same way. Just a matter of time. _

 

_ If I send the message, my life ends in that facility. _

 

Duck was yanked backwards out of the memory as Indrid shot up off the bed, overbalancing and almost falling as he grabbed everything off the floor, frenetic, stuffing clothes into a duffel bag. The future disappeared off the walls, the whole scene going transparent as Duck saw the forest overlaid on top of it- the Monongahela, the telescope.

 

The lodge, in the distance, looked like a spot of colors and images, but the landscape around was quiet.

 

_ Without the connection, there is no way for me to interfere. Without the interference, I won’t be able to see it anymore. _

 

There was only the lodge, the sylphs, and the abominations.

 

The rest of the woods were quiet.

 

There were no more visions. 

 


	33. Names

There’s moss underneath Indrid’s knees, and the forest shifts imperceptibly around him. The phantoms are gone, and the woods are quiet. 

 

Indrid feels a strange whisper along his skin, like someone’s trying to talk to him through a phone that’s breaking up. It makes him flinch, for a moment, remembering the way the visions always come flooding in when he gets to the edge of the Radio Quiet Zone- but it shifts away again, the visions settling back to manageable levels- but still in white. He’s still blind.

 

He takes a deep breath, and looks up. 

 

Duck’s sitting on a lower branch in one of the trees, looking out over the woods- at least, Indrid assumes it’s Duck. He’s 12 or 13 years old, swinging his legs, curled up into a hoodie with a beanie jammed down over his head. 

 

His frame is a little softer than Indrid’s used to, something different about it, and Indrid doesn’t register why until another child comes running out of the trees. They look very alike- almost enough to be siblings, but Indrid knows this isn’t Jane.

 

“Duck?”

 

“Yeah?” Duck’s voice sounds too high- and it wouldn’t occur to Indrid to think about that, but there’s something about the way it’s coded into the memory. Something about- 

 

Ah.

 

“Teacher’s looking for you.”

 

“What are you really out here for, Juno?”

 

The child huffed, adjusting her posture, and Indrid realized that her frame also felt off- something echoing in the landscape of the memory in a way that felt strange.

 

“Same as you.”

 

“Come on up, then.”

 

Juno moves fast, climbing the tree and settling down on the branch. There’s a long silence, and then she says, quietly-

 

“I wish they’d just let us trade places. We’re in the same classes.”

 

Duck snorted, settling against the tree.

 

“As soon as we’re old enough. And I don’t....much like that name anyway.”

 

“But Juno’s okay?”

 

“Yeah, Juno’s okay. Not like I’ve ever gone by my middle name unless my mom was real mad. You can take it. Duck’s okay?”

 

“Yeah. Same.”

 

“So we’ll trade. And they’ll listen to us one of these days.”

 

_ Maybe it’d be easier if they just didn’t see us. Maybe if they didn’t know what we looked like we could just trade clothes and go on with our lives. But no, we’ve gotta be the freaks. _

 

Indrid saw flashes over the landscape, Duck and Juno side by side in front of the teacher, in front of the counselor, in front of their parents. 

 

_ I just wanna be normal. _

 

A blue figure in front of Duck, it’s arms spread, Duck, standing in the woods, alone.

 

_ I never wanted to stand out. _

 

_ It’s not safe. _

 

Indrid felt the visions around him begin to pick up, and he reached out, trying to see if the little magic he possessed could pull at the edges of the memory.

 

_ Safe.  _ He thought as hard as he could.  _ Safe. _

 

The visions slowed. Duck was sitting in front of a principal’s desk, Juno standing next to him, holding the back of his chair.

 

“We know you don’t understand.” Juno was saying. “But this is how we are. I’m not a boy, he’s not a girl.”

 

The principal looked at a loss. “I respect that, Ms. Devine. But aren’t you too young to be thinking of-”

 

The door opened, and everyone in the room turned.

 

Indrid bit back a laugh, suddenly. Of course.

 

Leo Tarkesian stood in the doorway, smiling amiably, wearing a large trench coat. 

 

“Evenin’, Mr. Wilson. I got a call from Juno’s mom that there was a misunderstanding I might be able to help settle.”

 

The principal looked baffled.

 

“There’s nothing to do with the grocery-”

 

“No sir. But Mrs. Devine thought you might  _ appreciate  _ the perspective of an older member of the transgender community. Afraid there aren’t too many of us out here.”

 

“...oh.”

 

Leo moved into the room, and Indrid let out a sigh as he reached for the door behind him, trying to hold onto the image of his old friend.

 

_ My memories. My memories of Leo. Come on- _

 

He pushed open the door. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so it's a bit ambiguous and I struggled to make it clearer- duck and juno took each other's dead middle names.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to VigilantShadow for betaing!! I appreciate u


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